What's the difference between laugh and smirk?

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.

Smirk


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To smile in an affected or conceited manner; to smile with affected complaisance; to simper.
  • (n.) A forced or affected smile; a simper.
  • (a.) Nice,; smart; spruce; affected; simpering.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) 5.14pm GMT Alan Pardew speaks ... With a smirk playing around his chops in a charm offensive on Sky Sports, he says he ‘massively regrets” sticking the hid on Hull City midfielder David Meyler and says he’ll be sitting down for matches in the future.
  • (2) If Kyrgios cares about his career – and sometimes he is so blase about his success, wealth and celebrity he professes to hate tennis – the hip young dude from Canberra who smirks when he should be smiling, who plainly is struggling with fame, needs to understand he is not the only clown in town.
  • (3) He often seems mysteriously amused, cocking an eyebrow and pulling a coy, wouldn’t-you-like-to-know smirk, but he likes to laugh out loud, too.
  • (4) Asked about his repeated gestures, grins and smirks towards the victims, she said it brought back memories of seeing him at Srebrenica.
  • (5) "Now we know our fortresses are secure," says their president, Tim Farron, a smirk of triumph in his voice, "we can collect 25 or 30 more Tory seats."
  • (6) They get angry at the justice minister’s smirk as he refutes “any security gap” when in fact the bombs exploded close to an interior ministry building and the headquarters of the Turkish national intelligence organisations.
  • (7) He has a way of holding a half-smile on his face while listening to his opponent that appears perilously close to a smirk.
  • (8) It can take all of a parent's ingenuity to get though a shopping trip without unwillingly picking up a tin of Barbie spaghetti shapes, a box of cereal with Lightning McQueen smirking from the front, or a bag of fruit chews with a catchy jingle.
  • (9) His bastard Ramsay has shown his colors (whatever color is for sadism), but Roose – who abstains from alcohol and only offers a smirk at Lady Stark here, a frown with Jaime Lannister there – is still a cypher.
  • (10) Bidisha : Two sexist remarks and one misogynist one At a major literary festival, before an event about military fiction, a posh famous English author smirked to me, "What's the difference between a woman and a piece of toast?
  • (11) I saw the smirk, too, when I went on the road with Prince and the Revolution two years later, accompanying the 1999 tour on several dates through the Midwest.
  • (12) They might have been even more shaken had they known that the men in casual clothes handing them these strange, badly set little pamphlets – with their funereal black borders and another death’s head leering at them inside next to the smirking wish “Good luck” – were members of New York’s police forces.
  • (13) With such knowledge comes a predictable illusion of power, though this is all too regularly punctured by the indignity of being kicked out of shiny receptions and told to use an entrance more befitting of our lowly status – or of having my pronunciation of “Southwark Street” incorrectly corrected by a receptionist, who gives her colleague a sidelong smirk, commiserating over my supposed ignorance.
  • (14) When I look at their faces, I see nothing but bravado, whether it’s Beyoncé’s stoicism, Kerry Washington’s smirk or Serena’s confidence.
  • (15) The camera cuts to Groves in the audience, who is smirking at Froch's words.
  • (16) Leonardo DiCaprio plays Calvin Candie, the sadistic plantation owner, smirking into the zoom lens.
  • (17) A political debate that revolves around sniggering at women’s body parts and smirks about gay hairdressers?
  • (18) On another occasion, as the judge addressed Mladic about the procedure, the defendant appeared to switch off and turned to the victims again, smirking and nodding at them.
  • (19) On Thursday, she was pictured semi-naked on the cover of the Daily Star, a cut out of the heads of presenters Ant and Dec over each of her breasts, above a smirking caption claiming that "Naughty Nadine Dorries has boobed again!"
  • (20) The Catholic father in Ken Loach's Jimmy's Hall is just the most implacable enemy of nice-as-pie communists showing everyone a good time; the village imam in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Winter Sleep is an ingratiating, smirking creep; and the local rev in The Homesman (as played by John Lithgow) is definitely a weasel, rather too obviously grateful not to have to transport three traumatised frontierwomen back east.