Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who never laughs.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun rare one who never laughs (especially at jokes); a mirthless person
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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One minute you're learning that Sir Issac Newton chuckled only once in his life (scoffing at Euclidean geometry) and that the term for such people who don't laugh is 'agelast'; the next that the apparently nonsensical elephant jokes that were popular in the Sixties are believed to be racist in origin; the next how Bertrand Russell put down a heckler during one of his lectures on logic.
Chortle News RSS 2008
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For example, an agelast is someone who never laughs.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2011
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For example, an agelast is someone who never laughs.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2011
reesetee commented on the word agelast
One who never laughs.
February 23, 2007
seanahan commented on the word agelast
Anyone have any sort of etymology for this?
February 23, 2007
sarra commented on the word agelast
Gr. agelastos, not laughing; ultimately from gelaein, to laugh. Coined by the French Renaissance writer Rabelais, or so the source quoted in the OED suggests.
July 2, 2007
troopie commented on the word agelast
From Greek agelastos (not laughing), ultimately from gelaein (to laugh).
May 7, 2008
sarra commented on the word agelast
Troopie, your source is showing!
May 7, 2008
missanthropist commented on the word agelast
Mmm... oddly akin unto aghast.
July 31, 2008
sakhalinskii commented on the word agelast
One who has imbibed water from the fountain of youth.
July 31, 2008
qroqqa commented on the word agelast
This word 'ultimately' and the infinitive ending on gelaein hide rather than illuminate the etymology. The root is gel- "laugh", with thematic ending -a- (this puts it into a subclass of verbs and shows up in many derivatives). Then gel-a-st- is an adjectival stem, showing up in gelast-os, -ê, -on "laughable" and the noun gelastês (feminine gelastria) "laugher, sneerer". With the negative prefix it is the adjective agelast-os, -ê, -on "unlaughing". It is this that Rabelais borrowed, dropping the ending as usual to fit it into French.
July 31, 2008
jmjarmstrong commented on the word agelast
JM had a good old laugh with his mate the agelast
February 6, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word agelast
"Such (meta)satire not only labels Osborne a carnival agelast or unlaughing lenten hypocrite (Bakhtin 212-13) like Carroll's Queen of Hearts, but also suggests the dystopian undercurrents of carnival that post-Bakhtinians like Michael André Bernstein stress: 'when the tropes of Saturnalian reversal of all values spill over into daily life, they usually do so with a savagery that is the grim underside of their exuberant affirmations' (6)."
Mark M. Hennelly (2009). ALICE'S ADVENTURES AT THE CARNIVAL. Victorian Literature and Culture, 37 , pp 103-128 (p 106)
doi:10.1017/S106015030909007X
February 11, 2009
AllisonSylvester commented on the word agelast
"sam was an agelast, always seen with a serious face, and never cracked a laugh"
http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/unuwords.htm
September 30, 2010
100000038465146 commented on the word agelast
Someone who never laughs.
October 1, 2010
milosrdenstvi commented on the word agelast
I was your agelast June, I think.
October 1, 2010
fbharjo commented on the word agelast
agelastful
June 2, 2014