English

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Etymology

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From Latin cachinnō (laugh aloud), of onomatopoeic origin.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈkækɪneɪt/
  • Audio (US):(file)

Verb

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cachinnate (third-person singular simple present cachinnates, present participle cachinnating, simple past and past participle cachinnated)

  1. (intransitive) To laugh loudly, immoderately, or too often.
    Synonym: guffaw
    The villain began to cachinnate and twirl his moustache.
    • 1928 February, H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume 11, number 2, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., →OCLC, pages 159–178 and 287:
      There is a sense of spectral whirling through liquid gulfs of infinity, of dizzying rides through reeling universes on a comet’s tail, and of hysterical plunges from the pit to the moon and from the moon back again to the pit, all livened by a cachinnating chorus of the distorted, hilarious elder gods and the green, bat-winged mocking imps of Tartarus.

Derived terms

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Further reading

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Latin

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Verb

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cachinnāte

  1. second-person plural present active imperative of cachinnō