1921,Ring Lardner,The Big Town: How I and the Mrs. Go to New York to See Life and Get Katie a Husband, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, page73:
“And this rug,” he says, stomping on an old rag carpet. “How much do you suppose that cost?” ¶ It was my first guess, so I said fifty dollars. ¶ “That’s a laugh,” he said. “I paid two thousand for that rug.”
The roars of laughter which greeted his proclamation were of two qualities; some menlaughing because they knew all about cuckoo-clocks, and other menlaughing because they had concluded that the eccentric Jake had been victimised by some wise child of civilisation.
a.1701 (date written), John Dryden, “Of the Pythagorean Philosophy. From the Fifteenth Book ofOvid’sMetamorphoses”, inThe Miscellaneous Works of John Dryden,[…], volume IV, London:[…]J[acob] and R[ichard] Tonson,[…], published1760,→OCLC,page51:
The green ſtem grows in ſtature and in ſize, / But only feeds with hope the farmer's eyes; / Thenlaughs the childiſh year with flow'rets crowned, / And laviſhly prefumes the fields around, / But no ſubſtantial nouriſhment receives, / Infirm the ſtalks, unſolid are the leaves.
1735,Alexander Pope, “Epistle III. ToAllen Lord Bathurst.”, inThe Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, volume II, London:[…] J. Wright, for Lawton Gilliver[…],→OCLC,page23, lines311–314:
No Wit to flatter, left of all his ſtore! / No Fool tolaugh at, which he valued more. / There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, / And fame, this lord of uſeleſs, thouſands ends.
There was something about him, Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster. You willlaugh at me, I know, but I really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To the present day I can't make out why I did so; [...]
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Note: the following were in a translation table for "be or appear gay", which, given the modern meanings, is misleading; the title of this table has now been changed to "be or appear cheerful". The translations therefore need to be checked.
