Ridiculousnesses

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality or state of being absurd or laughably unreasonable
2. Instances or examples of extreme silliness or folly that provoke amusement
3. The condition of lacking seriousness in a way that is amusing or astonishing

Etymology: The word is a plural of "ridiculousness", which is itself built from "ridiculous" and the suffix "-ness". The suffix is one of English's oldest and most productive, descending from Old English "-nes", a noun-forming ending that could turn almost any adjective into a noun naming a quality or state. Its ancestors reach back through Proto-Germanic to a Proto-Indo-European root, but the working history is simply that English kept attaching it to adjectives for more than a thousand years. "Ridiculous" came into English from Latin "ridiculosus", a derivative of "ridiculus", meaning laughable or deserving scorn, from "ridere", to laugh. Adding "-ness" yields "ridiculousness", a noun for the quality of being absurd or laughable. The plural "ridiculousnesses" is the form of that noun used when the quality is counted or treated as several separate instances, as in a list of individual absurdities. Plurals of abstract nouns like this are uncommon, which is why the form tends to appear mainly in lists or jokes.

Synonyms: absurdities