"Laughing Stock"-The Phrase

[Dr. Bill Kobb]

So, I ran across this picture in my net meanderings, and it got me thinking about a phrase I'd always taken for granted, fetish notwithstanding.

After clicking on the attachment, perhaps someone could fill me in on the origins of the term/phrase "laughing stock"? Somehow, I'd always assumed it came from the idea that someone was perhaps so full of fail that they became a sort of inadvertent supply of laughter and jokes to others. But, perhaps it DOES indeed come from someone placed in the stocks of yore and tickled? Thus, the "laughing stocks"? Addled minds want to know! :helpsmilie:

 

[mikepd]

That's a classic pic. I think "laughing stock" was the town drunk. I'm prolly wrong. Or a retard.

 

[juggernaut]

Laughing-stock

Meaning

A figure or object of ridicule and laughter.

Origin

Laughing-stock is now usually written as a single hyphenated word, but it was previously the two-word phrase, 'laughing stock'.

It's moderately old and there are at least two citations of it dating back to the 16th century. John Frith's, An other boke against Rastel, 1533:

"Albeit ... I be reputed a laughing stock in this world."

and Sir Philip Sidney's, An apologie for poetrie, 1533:

"Poetry ... is fallen to be the laughing stocke of children."

The age of the phrase may be the reason that it is often linked with the practice of putting people into stocks as a punishment. The stocks were a means of punishment in use at the time the phrase was coined, by which people were tortured or ridiculed. Victims were held by having their ankles, and occasionally the wrists too, trapped in holes between two sliding boards. The punishment, although not as harsh as the pillory, in which people were confined by the neck, was severe and certainly not intended to be humorous.

Stocks and pillories are no longer used a means of punishment. More recently, it's become commonplace at school fairs and charity events to put volunteers into stocks and pillories and throw wet sponges at them. This is for humorous effect of course and has no doubt added to the idea that 'laughing-stock' originated this way.

The stock in question isn't that though. It refers to the meaning of stock as 'something solid that things can be fixed to', i.e. a butt or stump. So, 'laughing-stock' is just the same as 'the butt of the joke'.

It may be that the association between 'laughing-stock' and the practise of ridiculing people in the stocks grew over time. There's no reference to that in any of the early citations of the phrase though, and it seems clear that isn't the way the phrase originated.

 

[mikepd]

Oh nerrad, you sure do know how to kill a thread.

 

[seanwoj1]

Maybe its the name of the stocks she's tied to?

 

[Dr. Bill Kobb]

That's a classic pic.

I'd never seen it before. I lovelovelove how serious looking the gals tickling her are.

 

[mikepd]

I guess it's a classic to me. I love the nerd on the right.

 

[juggernaut]

Oh nerrad, you sure do know how to kill a thread.

Someone asks a question... someone posts an answer. How is that killing a thread?


Regardless, if I did... I'm glad. This thing needed murdered.

 

[mikepd]

I stand corrected.

 

[juggernaut]

That's right. Stand there. All corrected and shit. Anyone else got something to say? I opened this whole can of whoop-ass and only used a little bit.

You want some, Robocop?

 

[mikepd]

It's Robocop AND Sting.......Can's of whoop-ass are reserved for Steve Austin!!!

 

[juggernaut]

Damn. Now I'm standing here all corrected.

 

[TKLVR181]

I thought that it was because when you did something wrong in medival times you got put in public stocks and got laughed at?

~K

 

[P[a]pi]

I've always just assumed what you have assumed Rick, but ever since I found out what stocks were for and what they can be used for, whenever anybody says it I think of the fetish. The same goes with tickled or tickled pink cus somebody thinks something is cute or funny.

It would be cool if the phrase originated from public punishment in stocks, the laughing being from laughing at the punished and/or tickling them, but I doubt it.