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Guffaw   Listen
noun
Guffaw  n.  A loud burst of laughter; a horse laugh. "A hearty low guffaw."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Guffaw" Quotes from Famous Books



... was vindicating himself. He may have been a trifle disconcerted by Miss Fowler's musical laugh and Brock's plain guffaw, but he managed to preserve a stiff dignity. "It's no laughing matter. Officers, this is your man. Take him in charge. Madam, as I understand it, you are the alleged sister of the woman who is working herself off as Mrs. Medcroft. It may interest you to ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... this interrupted for a moment the bosom-friendship between my sister and Leah; nothing ever altered the genial sweetness of Leah's manners to me, nor indeed the cordiality of her parents: Mr. Gibson could not get on without that big guffaw of mine, at Whatever he looked or said or did; no Scatcherd could laugh as loudly and as readily as I! But I was very wretched indeed, and poured out my woes to Barty in long letters of poetical Blaze, and he would bid me hope and be ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... familiar ascent, and by Polly's door (barricaded inside with the chest of drawers) hummed a mirthful strain. As he jumped into bed the events of the evening all at once struck him in such a comical light that he uttered a great guffaw, and for the next ten minutes he lay under the ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing

... were occupied by stinking aliens—Greeks, he guessed, or Russians. He thought how much easier patriotism had been to a homogeneous race, how much easier it would have been to fight as the Colonies fought, or as the Confederacy fought. And he did no sleeping that night, but listened to the aliens guffaw and snore while they filled the car with the heavy ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... the spur of the gross insult flung at him, uttered in the momentary blind rage aroused by that inflamed and taunting face above him. No sooner were they sped than he repented them, the more bitterly because they were greeted by a guffaw from the rustics. He would have given half his fortune in that moment ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... ratione cujusque vocationis").[52] James Howell may have read maxim 99 on how to take jokes and how to make them, "joci sine vilitate, risus sine cachinno, vox sine clamore" (let your jokes be free from vulgarity, your laugh not a guffaw, and your ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... alive and about, was already looked to as a hierarch by the young. Not so had he been looked to by Rossetti. The thrill of the past was always strong in me when Watts-Dunton mentioned—seldom without a guffaw did he mention—'Jimmy Whistler.' I think he put in the surname because 'that fellow' had not behaved well to Swinburne. But he could not omit the nickname, because it was impossible for him to feel the right measure of resentment ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... been pulled down, an English Chartist went down to Edinburgh to address a large meeting of his brother politicians. He began by addressing them as "Men of the Heart of Midlothian!" There was a loud guffaw throughout the audience. He addressed them as if they were a body ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... with an added sternness of look that sent Dan off into another guffaw, "you have been guilty of insulting an upper class man. Your offense has been so serious—so rank—that I won't accept an apology. You shall ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... easily. "I never knew a man yet who would refuse honest money when it was offered to him. Well, Mrs. Richie, with all this marrying going on, I suppose the next thing will be you and friend Ferguson." Even as she said it, she saw in a flash an inevitable meaning in the words, and she gave a great guffaw of laughter. "Bless you! I didn't mean that! I meant you'd be picking up a wife somewhere, Mr. Ferguson, and Mrs. Richie, here, would be finding a husband. But the other way would be easier, and ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... went off into a loud abrupt guffaw like a neigh, evidently imagining that Stepan Trofimovitch had said something exceedingly funny. The latter gazed at him with studied amazement but produced no effect on him whatever. The prince, too, looked at the German, turning ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... people makes an annual visit to some mineral spring an absolute necessity; but, my dear people, take your Bible along with you, and take an hour for secret prayer every day, though you be surrounded by guffaw and saturnalia. Keep holy the Sabbath, though they denounce you as a bigoted Puritan. Stand off from those institutions which propose to imitate on this side the water the iniquities of Baden-Baden. Let your moral and your immortal ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... legalisation of the metric system, and yet last Session when a Bill to grant this prayer was at length introduced into the House of Commons by the Government the most audible comment from the assembled wisdom of the nation was a silly guffaw. ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox

... man, he's my pastor; my pastor. Biggest church, greatest crowds in the city. Well what would Sarah and the girls say!" He stood there gasping and shaking with laughter, until Old Matt, finding the ridiculous side of the situation, joined in with a guffaw that fairly drowned the sound of the ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright

... More they could not do. Margaret had repaired the "To-morrow box," and as she leaned over the glue, her tears mixed with it, and she cemented her exiled lover's box with them, at which a smile is allowable, but an intelligent smile tipped with pity, please, and not the empty guffaw of the nineteenth-century-jackass, burlesquing Bibles, and making fun of all things except fun. But when mended it stood unreplenished. They kept the weekly rent paid, and the pot boiling, but ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... cadence in her voice that restored Robert's surly good humor; he was of that peculiar type of spoiled youth whose laugh is a guffaw and whose mirth ever ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... though perhaps you're a bit young to understand that. Anyhow, I have my mates, not only old Turpentine, my snake, but others—wallabies that have come to recognise me as harmless, for I never hunt anywhere near home, the laughing jackasses, two of them, that come and guffaw to me every morning, the pheasants that I watch capering and strutting on the logs hidden in the scrub. Even the plants become friends; there are creepers near my camp that I've watched from babyhood, and more than one big tree with which I've ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... a widower, all the other men bachelors. How could they be expected to understand? They burst into a guffaw of laughter, and Abe, not even conscious that he had betrayed a sacred confidence, sputtered and ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... superstitious. He takes everything for granted. Rain, in his opinion, comes from a big tank up above somewhere. Asked as to his belief in the personal "debil-debil," of whom the mainland boys have such dread that few will stir out after dark, he said with a guffaw—"Me nebber bin see one yet. Suppose me see 'em, me run 'em!" George is, therefore, as yet unable to give a description of the fiend; but from hearsay authority declares that it possesses three eyes, two in the ordinary position, and one at the back of the head. It is believed ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... ma'am, you must hear me to the end," cried Caines, bursting into a guffaw; while Dick, looking somewhat conscience-stricken, patted his mother's hand and besought her in a loud whisper not ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... his advantage. He did what his wife in her irritation had precisely foreseen that he would do. He first stared, then fell into a guffaw of laughter, and as soon as he had recovered breath, into a series of unfeeling comments which ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... crowd, and 'Yah! yah!' echoed three or four well-dressed darkies, who were standing near the doorway: 'Sarved 'im right; he'm a mean ole cuss, he am;' chimed in one of the latter gentry, as he added another guffaw, and, swaying his body back and forth, brought his hands down on his thighs with a concussion which sent a thick cloud of tobacco smoke, of his own manufacture, circling to the other ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... mile!" the woman said with a guffaw. "Hit's six hundred an' sixty-three miles from Cairo to Vicksburg, yes, indeed. A hundred mile! I made hit in ten days, stoppin' along. I ketched ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... put the question timidly enough, and the witch-doctor burst into a great guffaw of laughter. Then after a preliminary dance, he took off a little packet of leopard skin, which hung amongst his other charms, and stuffed it deep ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... kindliness in her voice as she accepted his gallant aid, entered a deep impression on the tourist's mind; but he did not turn his head to look at her—perhaps he feared Bill's elbow quite as much as his guffaw—but he listened closely, and by listening learned that she had been "East" for several weeks, and also that she was known, and favorably known, all along the line, for whenever they met a team or passed a ranch some one ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... not, bumpkin," said Archy impatiently, as the men burst into a guffaw, and then looked horribly serious as if they had not smiled. "We saw her swimming and ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn

... viciously reasoning in a circle. What a show of faces at all the windows then! A shriek still accompanied us as we clattered, and thundered, and lightened along; and, unless our ears lied, there were occasional fits of stifled laughter, and once or twice a guffaw; for there was now a ringing of lost stirrups—and much holding of the mane. One complete round was executed by us, first on the shoulder beyond the pommel; secondly, on the neck; thirdly, between the ears; fourthly, between the forelegs, in a place called the counter, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various

... men having nothing special to do were standing lazily around. I was making my way to the bowsprit, and was walking rather rapidly, when the biggest bully on the boat put out his foot and threw me head foremost. This was received with a loud guffaw of derisive laughter, and the man who had done it was highly complimented on his achievement. I took no notice, however, doing that which I had set out to do. This, instead of lessening their dislike for ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... should rather write fierce joined, and there he was, the bloody Davoust—Duke of Auerstad Prince of Eckmuhl—the Hamburgh Robespierre—the terrible Davoust—dancing all around the room, in a regular guffaw, like to split his sides. The heated stove had made his sword, which rested on it, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... taken. But give it a play where it knows exactly what is going to happen next and you are rewarded with the delighted applause that comes of prophecy fulfilled. The thrill or chuckle of anticipation is succeeded by the shudder or guffaw of realisation. Father nudges Mother and says, "Look, Emma, he's going to fall into the flour-bin." He does fall into the flour-bin, and Father slaps his own or Mother's knee with a roar of triumph. After all, the old dramatic formulae were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various

... always dressed in black, with a superb string of pearls invariably about her neck, and lots of brilliant diamonds on her slender fingers. Breck with his heavy features, black hair brushed straight back, eyes half-closed as if he was always riding in a fifty-mile gale, deep guffaw of a laugh, and inelegant speech does not resemble his mother. It is strange, but the picture that I most enjoyed dwelling upon, when I contemplated my future life, was one of myself creeping up Fifth Avenue on late afternoons in the Sewalls' crested automobile, seated, not beside ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty

... 12th. Henriksen awoke me this morning at 6 with the information that there were several walruses lying on a floe quite close to us. "By Jove!" Up I jumped and had my clothes on in a trice. It was a lovely morning—fine, still weather; the walruses' guffaw sounded over to us along the clear ice surface. They were lying crowded together on a floe a little to landward from us, blue mountains glittering behind them in the sun. At last the harpoons were sharpened, guns and cartridges ready, and Henriksen, Juell, and I set off. There seemed to be a ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... Tommy's guffaw sounded from the verandah. It went into a greeting of Monck who came up unexpectedly at the moment and sat down on a wicker-chair to examine a handful of papers. Stella, working within the room, looked up swiftly at his coming, but if ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... spurred her on. She toiled on and rested and gazed despairingly at the high crags, but still she kept her face to the heights. As midnight approached and the trail had no ending she stopped and gazed doubtfully back, and then she went hurrying on. A clanking of rocks and the bass guffaw of men had come up to her from below; and terror supplied a whip that even hatred lacked—it was Ike Bray and ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... and turning to a piece of beef in the oven. "I knocked away the ice and after a little wrenching got at the pockets. But poor Trentanove! d'ye know, his nose came away with the mask of ice! He is no longer lovely to the sight!" He broke into a guffaw, then stuffed his mouth full and talked in the intervals of chewing. "There was nothing worth taking on Barros. ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... they walked through the garden, though Anna Vassilyevna sighed a little. But when they reached the carriages and stood still, they broke into an irrepressible, irresistible fit of Homeric laughter. First Shubin exploded, shrieking as if he were mad, Bersenyev followed with his gurgling guffaw, then Zoya fell into thin tinkling little trills, Anna Vassilyevna too suddenly broke down, Elena could not help smiling, and even Insarov at last could not resist it. But the loudest, longest, most persistent laugh was Uvar Ivanovitch's; he laughed till his sides ached, till he choked ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... when one carrion crow goes "Caw! Caw!" all the other crows hear it and flock together over the same carcass. "Oh, I have heard something rich! Sit down and let me tell you all about it." And the first guffaw increases the gathering, and it has to be told all over again, and as they separate each carries a spark from the altar of Gab to some other circle, until from the coal-heaver in the cellar to the maid in the top room of the garret all are ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... marriage is a cause for universal rejoicing. With our wine-glass in our hand we picture the ideal life we know to be in store for them. How can it be otherwise? She, the daughter of her mother. (Cheers.) He— well, we all know him. (More cheers.) Also involuntary guffaw from ill-regulated young man at end of table, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... been enjoying this cross-examination of my equivocal friend, now laughed outright, and heartily did I join in the guffaw: they were to "the manner born," and it was my puzzled expression that so tickled them; to me, after the first surprise was over, the whole thing was indescribably droll. I caught instantly "another gentleman," an idler about the public-house door, who, for ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... guffaw from the Flat Hat men greeted this wholesale condemnation. The Puffington men looked unutterable things, and there is no saying what disagreeable comparisons might have been instituted (for the Puffingtonians mustered strong) ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... nigger, shake dat whole tree; dis here ain't no cake-walk," one of his confrres yelled, and the sally was caught with a loud guffaw. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... life and the law Set our ribald young folk in a frequent guffaw; But the elders repose an implicit belief In so splendid a product of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various

... inevitable feature in all Malay gatherings, and he is generally one of the local holy men. 'It ain't precisely what 'e says, it's the funny way 'e says it;'—for, like the professionally comic man all the world over, these individuals are popularly supposed to be invariably amusing, and a loud guffaw goes up whenever they open their mouths, no matter what the words that issue from them. Most of his hearers had heard his threadbare old jokes any time these twenty years, but the ready laughter greeted each of them in turn, as though they were newly born ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... one was taxing to the fingers, but Michael's big hands banged out the octave scale in the bass with wonderful ease, and Falbe gave a great guffaw of pleasure at ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... sycophantic sense of humour, burst into a loud guffaw. Gedge swung angrily away, and Hosea and I continued our interrupted progress down the High Street. Although I had called his dark menaces drivel, I could not help wondering what it meant. Was he going to guide a German ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... the other, and it was so evident from the expression of their faces that he had just hit the mark, that he burst into a great guffaw of laughter, in which, after a moment's hesitation, his two young ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... loud guffaw, and another man dealt Bill a resounding slap on the back. Whereupon the sidewalk meeting adjourned. As they passed between the swinging doors of the saloon, Tom touched the last ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... melt awa, thou wreath o' snaw, That's sae kind in graving me; But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... way of pleasure. So he went to Europe and bought a great quantity of marble statuary and had the pieces placed in the spacious grounds about his home. When the opening day came there ensued much suppressed tittering and, now and then, an uncontrollable guffaw. Diana, Venus, Vulcan, Apollo, Jove, and Mercury had evidently stumbled into a convention of nymphs, satyrs, fairies, sprites, furies, harpies, gargoyles, giants, pygmies, muses, and fates. The result was bedlam. Parenthetically, I have often wondered how much money ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... proved your husband's Waterloo, as well as the Sedan of Bradley himself," returned Thaddeus, throwing his head back and bursting out into a loud guffaw. ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... all along. Yes, of course," he pondered; "that explains the success of the trick, which otherwise was clumsy beyond belief; in fact, its clumsiness puzzled me. But how was I to guess?" He pulled himself up on the edge of another guffaw. "Look here, Dorothea, be sensible. It's clear as daylight the fellow was after Polly, and made you his cats- paw. Face it, my dear; face it, and conquer your illusions. I understand it must cost you some suffering, but, after all, you must find some blame ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... o' hokey," said a derisive voice. "He hasn't got a tooth in his head, but it wants no chewing, hokey does na'." There was a general guffaw from the little ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... which brings the fresh breezes and lilac mountains of the Cape before me when I hear it. When I tell him to do anything he does it with strenuous care, and then asks, tayib? (is it well) and if I say 'Yes' he goes off, as Omar says, 'like a cannon in Ladyship's face,' in a guffaw of satisfaction. Achmet, who is half his size, orders him about and teaches him, with an air of extreme dignity and says pityingly to me, 'You see, oh Lady, he is quite new, quite green.' Achmet, who had never seen a garment or any article of European life two years ago, is now ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... glanced from Sir John to her ladyship and burst forth into a big guffaw, his convivialities having indeed robbed him ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... as yet condemned me, I ate of it hungrily and heartily. Yet not so fast as that the young "Gulliver" had not finished his before me, and sat at length watching every mouthful I took from beneath his sun-enticing thatch of hair. Ever and again he would toss up his chin with a shrill guffaw, or stoop his head till his eyeballs were almost hidden beneath their thick lashes, so regarding me for minutes together with a delightful simulation of intelligence, yet with that peculiar wistful affection his master had himself exhibited at ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... and pressed the spring of the box eagerly. Ping! Out popped the Jack into his astonished face; whereupon he set up a guffaw. ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown

... laugh was significant. He took off his sombrero and stood silent. The old driver smothered a loud guffaw. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... of the eye were bloodshot, and green is the complementary colour," interpolated Kennedy, whereat Owen gave a little incredulous guffaw; and Brogten continued— ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar



Words linked to "Guffaw" :   express joy, express mirth, laugh, laugh loudly



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