Image: Wikimedia Commons

laughter

Expression of amusement

Also known as laughing · laugh · haha · hahaha · lol · ha

Instance of: facial expression
Subclass of: smiling or laughing
, animal vocalization

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Laughter is a typically pleasant physical reaction and emotion consisting usually of rhythmical, usually audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. Laughter can rise from such stimuli as being tickled, or from humorous stories, imagery, videos or thoughts. Most commonly, it is considered an auditory expression of a number of positive emotional states, such as joy, mirth, happiness or relief. On some occasions, however, it may be caused by contrary emotional states such as embarrassment, surprise, or confusion such as nervous laughter or courtesy laugh. Age, gender, education, language and culture are all indicators as to whether a person will experience laughter in a given situation. Other than humans, some other species of primate express laughter-like vocalizations in response to physical contact such as wrestling, play chasing or tickling.

Overview

All data

54 statements · 22% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Different from: humor
Tawa
Risa
Unicode character: 😀
Cause: amusement
Hashtag: hahah
Opposite of: crying
Formal SignWriting transcription: M518x518S31900482x483S34000482x483

On other databases

42 identifiers linking laughter across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

22%

externally sourced

Source last edited September 1, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). laughter (Q170579). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/laughter-Q170579