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ludicrous

UK/ˈluː.dɪ.kɹəs/US/ˈluː.dɪ.kɹəs/
adjectiveC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,543 of 15,258leans spoken

Ludicrous means so silly that it deserves to be laughed at. A claim, a price, a hat.

The word is stronger than silly and funnier than absurd, and it carries real scorn: calling a suggestion ludicrous is refusing to take it seriously at all. It attaches happily to amounts, so ludicrous prices and a ludicrous amount of money are common. The Latin root is ludere, to play, which also gives English ludo and the word illusion. The adverb ludicrously usually props up an adjective, as in ludicrously expensive.

Definitions of ludicrous

  1. 1adjectiveludicrousSo foolish or unreasonable that it invites laughter.C1

    “The whole plan was ludicrous from the start.”

Also accepted in games: absurd, ridiculous

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    lūdicrus

  2. English, today

    ludicrous

Learned borrowing from Latin lūdicrus.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 3 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

ludicrous in the wild

  • Each section contains a bonus question, and several ways exist to score more points for a question, many of them ludicrous.

    The Unseen University Challenge

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.