ribverbinformal

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

to tease someone
teaseThe boys teased her mercilessly on the playground.
jokeI've lost your passport. Only joking!
kidI'm sorry, I forgot to get you a birthday present. Just kidding!
pull someone's legIs that really your car or are you pulling my leg?
ribHis brothers were ribbing him about his new girlfriend.
make fun ofThe other children made fun of him because he wore glasses.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Mocking and taunting
caricature
deride
deride someone/something as something
derision
derisive
lampoon
lay yourself open to ridiculeidiom
make a mockery of somethingidiom
make a monkey out of someoneidiom
mimic
mimicry
mock
mockery
piss
sardonically
scoff
scoffer
self-caricature
self-mockery
tauntingly

ridicule | American Dictionary

ridicule
noun[ U ]
us/ˈrɪd·ɪˌkjul/
words or actions that make someone or something seem foolish or stupid:
He was an unhappy figure of ridicule, not a figure of fun, among his colleagues.
ridicule
verb[ T ]
us/ˈrɪd·ɪˌkjul/
to laugh at someone or something in an unkind way:
She was ridiculed for her old-fashioned ideas.

Examples of ridicule

ridicule
They will not be denounced as ' 'wrong' ' or ridiculed.
Passages that were deemed to be incitements to mutiny were just as likely to be made examples of as those that ridiculed monarchy.
In particular, displays of active female sexuality are ridiculed by the music press.
A small minority, however, lacked support and acceptance, and were ridiculed.
Such moments deliver transcendence by trivialising irony, and ridiculing any sense that we have used up all experience has to offer.
He even ridiculed his illustrious musical fellow tribesmen, pillorying them mercilessly for their claims to be artists; it was impossible to deceive him for long.
The material desires of these men and women were a cumulatively powerful force which survived even though their fashionable impulses were challenged, resisted and ridiculed.
Unless completely at home with it, he/she sounds artificial and affected and usually ends up being ridiculed or taunted.
Examples of emotional maltreatment include belittling and ridiculing the child or exposure to severe marital violence.
He had his own way of ridiculing people, and provoking them.
Her 1954 book begins, for example, by ridiculing military leadership.
Both were also ridiculed and condemned for attracting charlatans and causing riots and disturbances.
The woman who put style before function was ridiculed by men and women alike.
I wish to show how female fans are trivialised and ridiculed by dividing them into four categories: teenyboppers, 'serious music' fans, women in subcultures, and 'groupies'.
Three historically important men are deliberately ridiculed or used as the agents of a comic effect in this opening scene, and each is presented as a parody of himself.
See all examples of ridicule
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.