Ridiculous

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ɹɪˈdɪk.jʊ.ləs/

Definitions

1. Extremely silly, unreasonable, or absurd in a way that deserves or invites mockery
2. Extremely unreasonable or absurd to the point of evoking laughter or scorn from others
3. So unreasonable or silly that it causes people to laugh or find it hard to believe

Etymology: The Latin root of "ridiculous" is "rīdiculus," meaning "laughable," which in turn grew from "rīdēre," "to laugh." English took the word directly from Latin, so its ancestry is not a tangled one. What makes it interesting is how far its sense has drifted from simple amusement. The word first pointed at things that provoked laughter, and over time it came to describe things so foolish or unreasonable that they deserve scorn rather than a chuckle. The English word is built from "ridicule" plus the suffix "-ous," a common way of turning a noun into an adjective meaning "full of" or "having the quality of." "Ridicule" itself came into English from French, and it carries the same Latin ancestry. So "ridiculous" is essentially "ridicule-ful": something full of the quality that invites mockery.

Synonyms: absurd, laughable, preposterous, comical

Antonyms: reasonable, sensible