ludicrous

English

WOTD – 19 February 2008

Etymology

First attested in 1619. From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin lūdicrus, from lūdō (“play”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈluː.dɪ.kɹəs/, /ˈljuː.dɪ.kɹəs/
• IPA^(key): /ˈluː.dɪ.kɹəs/

• Audio (UK):

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• Audio (AU):

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Adjective

ludicrous (comparative more ludicrous, superlative most ludicrous)

1. Idiotic or unthinkable, often to the point of being funny.
   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 3, in The Celebrity:

     Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.

   He made a ludicrous attempt to run for office.

2. Amusing by being plainly incongruous or absurd.
   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 2, in The Mirror and the Lamp‎^[1]:

     She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid, […]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.

   • 2014, Paul Doyle, "Southampton hammer eight past hapless Sunderland in barmy encounter", The Guardian, 18 October 2014:

     Five minutes later, Southampton tried to mount their first attack, but Wickham sabotaged the move by tripping the rampaging Nathaniel Clyne, prompting the referee, Andre Marriner, to issue a yellow card. That was a lone blemish on an otherwise tidy start by Poyet’s team – until, that is, the 12th minute, when Vergini produced a candidate for the most ludicrous own goal in Premier League history.

Synonyms

• (idiotic or unthinkable): laughable, ridiculous

Related terms

• (idiotic or unthinkable): ludicrously, ludicrousness

Translations

idiotic or unthinkable, often to the point of being funny

• Catalan: ridícul (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 滑稽的 (zh) (huájī de), 荒唐的 (zh) (huāngtáng de)

• Finnish: älytön (fi), absurdi (fi), järjetön (fi), idioottimainen (fi), naurettava (fi), huvittava (fi)
• French: absurde (fr)
• Galician: ridículo m
• German: aberwitzig (de)
• Greek:

  Ancient Greek: γελοῖος (geloîos)

• Hebrew: מגוחך m (megoḥaḥ)
• Hungarian: nevetséges (hu)
• Indonesian: konyol (id)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Italian: ridicolo (it)
• Maori: nenekara, kūrapa
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: latterlig (no)

• Polish: idiotyczny (pl) m, niedorzeczny (pl) m, absurdalny (pl) m, groteskowy (pl) m
• Portuguese: ridículo (pt)
• Romanian: absurd (ro), ridicol (ro)
• Russian: неле́пый (ru) (nelépyj), абсу́рдный (ru) (absúrdnyj), смехотво́рный (ru) (smexotvórnyj)
• Scottish Gaelic: amaideach
• Slovak: absúrdne n, choré n (slang)
• Spanish: irrisorio, ridículo (es), disparatado (es), descabellado (es)
• Swedish: löjlig (sv), skrattretande (sv), absurd (sv)
• Welsh: digrif (cy), chwerthinllyd (cy), ysmala