mirthless
He smiled mirthlessly . "Just the woman I want to see," he said quietly.
She grinned mirthlessly, showing her long, blood-red fangs.
He laughs mirthlessly at the fact that he might lose his possessions at the hands of the police.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Lacking humour
a laugh a minuteidiom
be no laughing matteridiom
beyond
beyond a jokeidiom
earnestly
earnestness
humourlessly
intense
lightly
saturnine
sober
soberly
solemnity
sombreness
starchy
straight-facedly
turgid
turgidity
turgidly
ultra-serious

Examples of mirthlessly

mirthlessly
He laughed mirthlessly, though he was already moving southward along the square with me as he began to speak again.
From Project Gutenberg
She laughed mirthlessly between lips that did not smile and regular, white teeth.
From Project Gutenberg
She blinked and strained her eyes open and laughed mirthlessly, then was silent, with the knuckles of her fist pressed tightly against her mouth.
From Project Gutenberg
He was smiling mirthlessly, with the black mustaches taking the sardonic upcurve.
From Project Gutenberg
And, still coughing and laughing mirthlessly, he went out of the room.
From Project Gutenberg
He laughed mirthlessly and the girl shrank as if she had been struck.
From Project Gutenberg
He laughed mirthlessly, and took his hand from her shoulder.
From Project Gutenberg
Then he smiled mirthlessly, for his hand had not shown the slightest tremor.
From Project Gutenberg
He forced himself to laugh, and the laugh sounded mirthlessly in his ears.
From Project Gutenberg
But if we smiled mirthlessly at these recollections we worked while we chewed on our cud of bitterness.
From Project Gutenberg
He grinned mirthlessly, got up, took a hitch in his cartridge belt, and drew a full breath.
From Project Gutenberg
He laughed frequently at the wrong time and mirthlessly.
From Project Gutenberg
Mirthlessly, wretchedly, a grin began to spread over his face.
From Project Gutenberg
The old man laughed mirthlessly; then his voice changed.
From Project Gutenberg
Then he laughed mirthlessly and tried to excuse himself.
From Project Gutenberg
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.