Laughter is the sound people make when something amuses them. Burst into laughter, roars of laughter, the laughter died away.
It is mostly social rather than funny: people laugh far more in conversation than at jokes, and laughter is chiefly a signal that things are going well between them. It is uncountable, so there are no laughters.
1nounlaughterThe sound people make when something amuses them.
“We could hear laughter coming from the kitchen, where the kids were telling jokes.”
laughter is a sound.
Old English hleahtor comes from a Germanic root that imitates the sound.
Proto-Indo-European
*klek-
Proto-Germanic
*hlahtraz — laughter
Old English
hleahtor — laughter, jubilation, derision
Middle English
laughter
English, today
laughter
Built from
From Middle English laughter, laghter, laȝter, from Old English hleahtor (“laughter, jubilation, derision”), from Proto-Germanic hlahtraz (“laughter”), from Proto-Indo-European klek-, kleg- (“to shout”). Cognate with German Gelächter (“laughter, hilarity, merriment”), Danish and Norwegian latter (“laughter”), Icelandic hlátur (“laughter”). More at laugh.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA