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Ludicrous vs Ridicule - What's the difference?

ludicrous | ridicule |

As adjectives the difference between ludicrous and ridicule

is that ludicrous is idiotic or unthinkable, often to the point of being funny while ridicule is (obsolete) ridiculous.

As a verb ridicule is

to criticize or disapprove of someone or something through scornful jocularity; to make fun of.

As a noun ridicule is

derision; mocking or humiliating words or behaviour.

ludicrous

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Idiotic or unthinkable, often to the point of being funny.
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=3 , passage=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.}}
  • Amusing by being plainly incongruous or absurd.
  • * 2014 , , " 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.
  • * , title=The Mirror and the Lamp
  • , chapter=2 citation , passage=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.}}

    Synonyms

    * (idiotic or unthinkable) laughable, ridiculous

    ridicule

    English

    Verb

    (ridicul)
  • to criticize or disapprove of someone or something through scornful jocularity; to make fun of
  • His older sibling constantly ridiculed him with sarcastic remarks.

    Synonyms

    * (l)

    Noun

  • derision; mocking or humiliating words or behaviour
  • * Alexander Pope
  • Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne, / Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.
  • An object of sport or laughter; a laughing stock.
  • * Buckle
  • [Marlborough] was so miserably ignorant, that his deficiencies made him the ridicule of his contemporaries.
  • * Foxe
  • To the people but a trifle, to the king but a ridicule .
  • The quality of being ridiculous; ridiculousness.
  • * Addison
  • to see the ridicule of this practice

    Synonyms

    * See also

    See also

    * humiliation

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (obsolete) ridiculous
  • This action became so ridicule . — Aubrey.
    (Webster 1913)