What's the difference between laugh and scoff?

Laugh


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To show mirth, satisfaction, or derision, by peculiar movement of the muscles of the face, particularly of the mouth, causing a lighting up of the face and eyes, and usually accompanied by the emission of explosive or chuckling sounds from the chest and throat; to indulge in laughter.
  • (v. i.) Fig.: To be or appear gay, cheerful, pleasant, mirthful, lively, or brilliant; to sparkle; to sport.
  • (v. t.) To affect or influence by means of laughter or ridicule.
  • (v. t.) To express by, or utter with, laughter; -- with out.
  • (n.) An expression of mirth peculiar to the human species; the sound heard in laughing; laughter. See Laugh, v. i.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Perhaps they can laugh it all off more easily, but only to the extent that the show doesn’t instill terror for how this country’s greatness will be inflicted on them next.
  • (2) Unlikely, he laughs: "We were founded on the idea of distributing information as far as possible."
  • (3) If this is what 70s stoners were laughing at, it feels like they’ve already become acquiescent, passive parts of media-relayed consumer society; precursors of the cathode-ray-frazzled pop-culture exegetists of Tarantino and Kevin Smith in the 90s.
  • (4) He shrugs his shoulders and laughs: "And they call us thieves!"
  • (5) It’s useless if we try and fight with them through force, so we try and fight with them through humour.” “There is a saying that laughing is the best form of medicine.
  • (6) During well-coordinated neurological and psychiatric treatment the laughing seizures (spontaneous, event-related, psychogenic) decreased and a considerable improvement in psychiatric and psychosocial problems was attained.
  • (7) Keepy-uppys should be a simple skill for a professional footballer, so when Tom Ince clocked himself in the face with the ball while preparing to take a corner early in the second half, even he couldn't help but laugh.
  • (8) Having long been accustomed to being the butt of other politicians' jokes, however, Farage is relishing what may yet become the last laugh.
  • (9) "I rang my wife to tell her," he says, "and she just laughed."
  • (10) Best friends since school, they sound like an old married couple, finishing each other's sentences, constantly referring to the other by name and making each other laugh; deep sonorous, belly laughs.
  • (11) Fields said: "The assertions that Tom Cruise likened making a movie to being at war in Afghanistan is a gross distortion of the record... What Tom said, laughingly, was that sometimes, 'That's what it feels like.'"
  • (12) I present this to Rudd, who laughs and asks if there was any overlap between those who wanted sex and those who wanted to start filming.
  • (13) He made me laugh and cry, and his courage in writing about what he was going through was sometimes quite overwhelming.
  • (14) I think the “horror and outrage” Roberts complains of were more like hilarity, and the story still makes me laugh (as do many others on Mumsnet, which is full of jokes as well as acronyms for everything).
  • (15) Patients with bilateral forebrain disease may commonly manifest the syndrome of pathologic laughing and weeping.
  • (16) She could still really make us laugh,” her mother says.
  • (17) He laughs: "I've had a few guys buck up against me, but that's all right because some of us enjoy the bucking."
  • (18) Intricate is the key word, as screwball dialogue plays off layered wordplay, recurring jokes and referential callbacks to build to the sort of laughs that hit you twice: an initial belly laugh followed, a few minutes later, by the crafty laugh of recognition.
  • (19) Harry Kane laughs off one-season wonder tag after Alan Shearer pep talk Read more “He is a great role model.
  • (20) "Everyone calls him the Socialist Worker Padre," one bland senior cleric told me with a sly and dismissive laugh.

Scoff


Definition:

  • (n.) Derision; ridicule; mockery; derisive or mocking expression of scorn, contempt, or reproach.
  • (n.) An object of scorn, mockery, or derision.
  • (n.) To show insolent ridicule or mockery; to manifest contempt by derisive acts or language; -- often with at.
  • (v. t.) To treat or address with derision; to assail scornfully; to mock at.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Lunchtime read: How banter conquered Britain Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Guardian Design Team There are hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, you can eat at restaurants called Scoff & Banter or buy an “Archbishop of Banterbury” T-shirt for £9.99.
  • (2) Mere hypothecation, scoff politicians, rejecting the idea again in parliament yesterday.
  • (3) And does Ofsted really expect to get away with using the “kids today!” scoff as an actual, presentable-to-parliament reason for these embarrassingly high youth unemployment rates?
  • (4) Russia continues to scoff at evidence that Syrian government forces carried out the chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhun earlier this week.
  • (5) Brooks worries that part of the problem with society is that we have become conditioned to scoff the marshmallow.
  • (6) Penny Wong scoffs at 'entertaining but erratic' Barnaby Joyce leading National party Read more The governor of the Reserve Bank Glenn Stevens said at the time there were “few things less likely than Australia defaulting on its sovereign debt”.
  • (7) Rolf scoffs at those who say the Fight for 15, which the SEIU has underwritten, has failed at its goals of unionizing McDonald’s and getting it to adopt a $15 minimum.
  • (8) Clegg will insist that the Lib Dems have already replaced Labour as the country's leading "progressive" party and scoff at Tory pretensions to the same label.
  • (9) Heavily bandaged and unable to walk, she scoffs at the US ambassador's talk of a thorough investigation of the Ahuas raid.
  • (10) Rodgers scoffs at papers from US military colleges branding them a strategic threat and a Honduran government claim linking maras to al-Qaida.
  • (11) Although, of course, the easiest thing would simply to be British about all this and scoff.
  • (12) The Castrol Index, for the mercifully uninitiated, is of course the nonsense ranking scheme cooked up by some bods at Fifa's Castle Greyskull to give people even more of a reason to scoff at them, which is always grand.
  • (13) "You can't scoff at sewing and it's practicality," asserts Dave Montez.
  • (14) Sceptics may scoff, and results of an attempt to extract DNA and match it to descendants are not due until Christmas, but Thompson is adamant that the bones now resting in a safe in the archaeology and ancient history department of Leicester University are those of the last Plantagenet, Richard III , who rode out of Leicester on the morning of 22 August 1485 a king, and came back a naked corpse slung over the pommel of a horse.
  • (15) Presented with official estimates of how many immigrants are in the country illegally, a common response is to scoff.
  • (16) Morrissey scoffs at Vanessa Redgrave's celebrity humanitarianism in his autobiography.
  • (17) I used to scoff at the simplicity of equating onscreen violence with its real-world equivalent.
  • (18) Liberals may scoff, pundits may shake their heads, but Palin herself clearly still wants some form of political life.
  • (19) His opposite number scoffs at the forecasts and promises his tweaks would be far superior.
  • (20) Some might call such a day 'The Millennium', but America shies away from the socialist solution, while the rest of the world scoffs but votes with its wallets to adopt our culture.