Risibility

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. the quality of being laughable or ridiculous, or the capacity to laugh or find amusement in something
2. the tendency or ability to find things funny combined with a susceptibility to appearing absurd or worthy of derision
3. the disposition toward laughter alongside the characteristic of being prone to mockery or perceived as comical

Etymology: Rare as it is, "risibility" has a traceable history. It comes from Latin "risibilis," meaning "laughable" or "able to laugh," built from "ridere" ("to laugh") with the suffix "-bilis" ("capable of being"). English borrowed the adjective "risible" in the early 1600s, and the noun "risibility" followed in the 1600s as well. Its sense was once less light than it sounds: "risible" originally meant "capable of laughing," describing a human faculty, and only later came to mean "laughable" in the sense of ridiculous. Philosophers liked the idea that laughter set humans apart, and the Latin "risibilis" was used in that tradition to describe the capacity to laugh as a defining trait. The noun "risibility" carried that meaning directly, so it named the faculty itself rather than the funny thing that provoked it.

Synonyms: laughter, amusement

Antonyms: seriousness, solemnity