laugh down

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laugh down

To dismiss, belittle, or reject someone or something by laughing derisively or treating them or it very casually. A noun or pronoun can be used between "laugh" and "down." There were quite a few doubts within the company about the decision, but the new CEO just laughed it all down. For the most part, people here just laughed down the foreign president and his blustering rhetoric.
See also: down, laugh
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2022 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

laugh someone or something down

to cause someone to quit or cause something to end by laughing in ridicule. Her singing career was destroyed when the audience laughed her down as an amateur. The cruel audience laughed down the amateur singer. They laughed down the magic act also.
See also: down, laugh
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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References in classic literature ?
They went laughing down the steps, and joined the game.
View in context
Seymour seemed to be listening, elegant and unconscious as was his posture, and he seemed relieved when he heard the lady call out some last instructions to the Captain, and then turn sharply and run laughing down the passage towards the other end, the end on the terrace above the Thames.
View in context
The calls range from children laughing down the phone, to being abusive and swearing, and calling about made-up incidents.
Hoax calls risk lives
A fairly clear way to bring some order to this confusion is to distinguish between laughing up and laughing down. In Western nations, we are generally OK with laughing up at people or groups who are relatively more powerful.
What good is humour without some hurt?
Although, if Baggs did have a glass ceiling I dare say he'd have seen God Himself laughing down at him from a cloud during the moment he blurted out to Lord Sugar: "I'm not a one trick pony, or a 10 trick pony.
in the firing line; Witty TV writer Nathan Bevan gives the current series of The Apprentice both barrels as the final approaches
The mum said: "I said, 'You're not police' and they then started laughing down the phone, saying 'yes, we got her and you're not getting her back."
I was lured into world of booze and drugs, then gang raped at 15
THE family of a pensioner who died shortly after being discharged from hospital told an inquest she "hated the nurses" and alleged staff could be heard "laughing down the corridor" when her patient bleeper went off.
Pensioner 'hated the hospital nurses' after stay - inquest
FANS were laughing down the phone yesterday after Celtic manager Neil Lennon waded into the Nadir Ciftci affair.
Hotline
Daryl Hall - Laughing Down Crying Daryl Hall is the blue-eyed soul singer who had hits aplenty with John Oates as Hall & Oates in the 1980s.
ON THE RECORD
Now he's on a solo tour promoting new album Laughing Down Crying.
GIGS
It has been more than 30 years between solo releases - his first, Sacred Songs, was made with ROBERT FRIPP, but Laughing Down Crying is worth the wait.
Hall alone is just as good
He said Uppal sat down next to him and said to him: "I saw you laughing down the hill.
SOLICITOR ELBOWED IN THE FACE
"The girl was clearly getting a kick out of it and laughing at me getting more angry at whoever was laughing down the phone.
RAPED AND ABUSED - THEN TAUNTED BY GANG; SICK SOCIETY: A VICTIM'S MISERY
Early minstrelsy destabilized the very categories it was supposed to police by not only propping up but laughing down a static and rigid conception of ethnic identity.
Henry B. Wonham. Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism
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