A laughingstock is somebody everybody laughs at. Become a laughingstock, the laughingstock of the town, made a laughingstock.
It is public humiliation rather than private embarrassment: a laughingstock is laughed at by a whole group, and the word implies the loss of standing that goes with it. It applies to institutions as well as people. The stock in it is the old sense of a stump or post — the thing set up for a purpose — as in the stocks people were once put in to be jeered at.
1nounlaughingstockSomebody everybody laughs at.
“After he fell into the pool in his suit, he became the laughingstock of the office.”
laughingstock is an object of ridicule.
Laughing plus stock, where stock means a stump or post, and by extension a thing set up as a target. Whipping stock and gazing stock were built the same way and have died.
From laughing + stock.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA