Rideo
Published: 2021-11-09“Rire” in French means “to laugh”. Thinking about the “ri” part, I realized that there are several English words related to laughter that have “ri” as a substring. In fact, they come from the Latin word “rīdeō”, meaning “to laugh”. In this post, I will show you some words that have this origin.
ridiculous
One of the most commonly used words is ridiculous, meaning “arousing or deserving mockery or absurd”.
deride
This word is composed of the prefix “de-“ and rīdeō. The “de-“ here donotes some indignity (cf. detest, delude).
risible
“Risible”1 means “having the faculty or power of laughing” or “capable of provoking laughter”. It is often used almost the same way as ridiculous.
riant
“Riant” in English means “smiling”. The exact same word exists in French as its etymon (“riant” is the present participle of “rire”2).