[f. LAUGH v. + -ER1.]
1. One who laughs; one addicted to laughing; also, a scoffer.
c. 1410. Love, Bonavent. Mirr., vi. (Gibbs MS.). Crystes wepynges and teers comforteth not dissolute laughers.
c. 1515. Cocke Lorell’s B., 11. Swerers, and outragyous laughers.
1597. Shaks., Lover’s Compl., 124. To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weepe.
1676. Etheredge, Man of Mode, III. ii. Softly, these are Laughers, you do not know ’em.
1702. Steele, Grief à la Mode, I. i. 1. You are of the Laughers [mispr. Laughters], the Wits that take the Liberty to deride all Things that are Magnificent and Solemn.
a. 1715. Burnet, Own Time (1724), I. 260. For the author of the Rehearsal Transprosed had all the men of wit (or, as the French phrase it, all the Laughers) on his side.
1784. Cowper, Lett. to W. Unwin, in Corr. (1824), I. 331. The laughers you mention may live to be sensible of their mistake.
1812. D’Israeli, Calam. Auth. (1867), 115. The wit has gained over the laughers on his side.
1821–30. Ld. Cockburn, Mem., ii. (1874), 92. The public sided with the best laugher.
1897. ‘Mark Twain,’ More Tramps Abr., lxvii. Most of them are … good-natured, and easy laughers.
2. A variety of the domestic pigeon, so called from its peculiar note.
1765. Treat. Dom. Pigeons, 133. The laugher is about the size of a middling runt, and of much the same make.
1867. Tegetmeier, Pigeons, xviii. 159. Under the title of the Laugher, Moore describes a variety that, like the Trumpeter, has a very peculiar voice.
