underlaugh

plural underlaughs · alternative under-laugh

1. A suppressed laugh

   Campbell laughed a quiet under-laugh, half sad, half humorous.

   2013, Charles Kingsley, Delphi Complete Works of Charles Kingsley

   3 more examples

   John Joy Tree greeted this with an ugly underlaugh, a barely audible sound which made Casher feel the whole situation was ridiculous.

   1964, Galaxy Magazine - Volume 23, Issues 1-6, page 52

   “A stretcher case, surely,” he added, and an underlaugh rippled through the ranks and files.

   2011, Ward McBurney, Sap's War

   So in this specific role, in this specific scene, my fontal rush of propulsive fear, my prickly self-strickenness, and my strangled underlaugh that was (and still is) a result of what Sigmund Freud identified as the “liminal dilemma between the intense desire for supplication and the concurrent need for masochistic provocation” all combined to create an illusion of a brilliant stage presence, bursting with potential and future possibility.

   2012, Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia, page 11