Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) a psychiatric institution.

1911		Tacoma Times (WA) 6 June 2/3: Things that fit a man for residence in the laughing academy.
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 14: Coombs was ready for the laughing academy when you had to talk through a little hole in the door to get a drink.
1954		K. Vonnegut ‘Custom-Made Bride’ in Bagombo Snuff Box (1999) 110: They tell me this Krummbein is a genius, but I say he belongs on Skid Row or in a laughing academy.
1961		Rigney & Smith Real Bohemia xv: laughing academy mental hospital.
1965		(con. 1920s) Carmichael & Longstreet Sometimes I Wonder 157: It’s warm and swimmy here, crazy as a laughing farm.
1968		L. Wolf Voices from the Love Generation 48: I’d been to prison, I’d been to the laughing academy.
1973		M. Harris The Dilly Boys 51: Pull up your docks or I know you’ll end up in the Laughing House.
1975		J. Wambaugh Choirboys (1976) 139: The way you’re going to bat to get the old man back in the laughing academy.
1985		D. Etter Home State 31: Poisoners of the environment, militant racists, and loony-bird radicals (both left and right variety), who belong in the nearest laughing academy.
1994		G. Matthews Wisdom of Stones 38: They promoted him to the laughing academy, last I heard.
2003		J. Mackie Manhattan North 121: ‘Confined to some laughing academy upstate,’ Marcus said. ‘A real ritzy, private laughing academy, I might add.’.
2011		Guardian 2 Dec. [internet] Has anybody talked this way since poor Blanche DuBois was carried off to the Laughing academy?

1. an ironic nickname given to someone who seems consistently, or even temporarily, miserable and in low spirits.

1940		Meehan & Tugend Seven Sinners [film script] Laughing boy is here again [HDAS].
1959		W. Hall Long and the Short and the Tall Act I: One murmur, Jap, and Laughing Boy here will slit your guts up to your ears.
1967		J. Wynnum I’m a Jack, All Right 26: Imagine the act old laughing boy here is going to stack on if we’re attacked.
1979		A. Payne ‘The Dessert Song’ Minder [TV script] 24: Where’s laughing boy with his sea-chest?
1998		J. O’Connor Salesman 267: An expulsion order, they call it. Heard I was dealin’ smack. And they don’t like that, Homer, the laughin’ boys, don’t like it at all.
2017		A. Parks Bloody January 8: ‘How come laughing boy knows about it anyway?’.

2. one who laughs complacently prior to encountered problems.

1993

Tarantino & Avery Pulp Fiction [film script] 98: Laughing boy stops when he sees the big man.

the mouth.

[1832		Atheneum 25 Feb. 133/1: A new burletta was produced here [...] called ‘The Proof of the Pudding’. [...] The fun is but chill fun, and the audience had some difficulty in getting their laughing tackle in motion].
[1882		Eve. Bull. (Maysville, KY) 30 Oct. 3/1: And don’t forget your laughing gear / For fun will be red hot].
1964		R. Helmer Stag Party 82: ‘Here, wrap your laughin’ gear round that lot,’ Crump said, handing me a heaped plateful.
1985		B. Humphries Traveller’s Tool 78: The thing that most of them want to wrap their laughing gear around is above table-level.
1991		A. Billson My Name Is Michael Caine 123: [...] the sort of dialogue around which actors love to wrap their laughing tackle.
1990		R.G. Barratt ‘’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] [A] different native looking like he’s got a frisbee jammed in his mouth and he’s saying: ‘Get your laughing gear around this’.
1993		J. Meades Pompey 236: He never knew whose daughter she was, this girl with the magic laughing tackle, this little mystery in Greenhouse .
2000		R.G. Barrett Leaving Bondi (2013) [ebook] Les unzipped his fly and pulled out Mr Wobbly [...] then put his hand on the back of Blythe’s head. ‘So get your literary laughing gear around this.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].
2014		T. Black Artefacts of the Dead [ebook] Get your laughing gear round that.

(Aus.) an elastic-sided boot.

1937		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Jan. 20/3: ‘Laughing-sides’ wouldn’t last long in a boggy cowyard.
1960		J. Walker No Sunlight Singing (1966) 55: Khaki trousers [...] covered the bony legs almost to the dirty bare ankles which disappeared into a broken-down pair of ‘laughingside’ riding boots.
1967		F.J. Hardy in Great Aus. Lover Stories 121: Laughing-sided boots, shirts and all that whitefella stuff.
1975		K. Willey Ghosts of the Big Country 16: The younger Yanyula men in wide cowboy hats and ‘laughing-sides’.

(US) an alcoholic drink, esp. champagne; thus laughing soup mixer, a barman, laughing soup parlor, a bar.

1903		‘Hugh McHugh’ I Need The Money 27: He could wrap his system around more Indian laughing-juice without getting lit up than any other man in the world.
1908		B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 154: Reserve the shower bath suite for me, yaas — and fill the bath with laughing soup.
1908		‘Hugh McHugh’ Go To It 37: The proprietor [...] wanted to buy me six buckets of Ruinart laughing-water.
1914		Bisbee Dly Rev. (AZ) 10 May 6/2: Along the big eats, will be much laughing juice.
1929		W. Winchell On Broadway 20 Aug. [synd. col.] A ‘shortie’ of laughing soup, which is ½ a pint, costs only 35 cents a convulsion.
1929		W. Winchell On Broadway 17 Sept. [synd. col.] A new laughing soup parlor [...] will be backed by Wall Street big shots.
1936		Archie Seale Man About Harlem 18 Apr. [synd. col.] [A] fine dinner breezed in and stated to gumbeat with Cliff, the laughing soup mixer.
1939		W. Winchell ‘On Broadway’ 23 Sept. [synd. col.] They made it verboten to sell laughing-soup to any person who looks like a member of the Lucas Beebe set.
1941		M. Prenner ‘Drunk in Sl.’ in AS XVI:1 Jan. 70/2: liquor [...] laughing soup.
1969		G. Allvine Greatest Fox of Them All 84: Jack’s on Sixth Avenue [...] where bouncers were expertly trained to propel to the sidewalk anyone carrying too much laughing soup.
1984		H.C. Beck Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey 252: [...] strong liquors, fork lightning compared to what the ultra-moderns call laughing soup, could be had for the asking.
2003		I. Greenwell Ancestor 233: The Shaman will have a dinner ready for a celebration, with much laughing juice to swallow it with.

(US drugs) marijuana.

1925		cited in Partridge DU (1949).
1936		Scientific American Mar. 150: The drug, also known as loco weed, muggles, Indian hay, Indian hemp, hasheesh, laughing tobacco, and reefers, is dried and rolled into cigarettes selling from five to 25 cents apiece.
1953		Anslinger & Tompkins Traffic In Narcotics 311: laughing weed. A marihuana cigarette.
2001		Daily Tel. (London) 30 Jan. n.p.: May I interest you in some Aunt Mary? Or perhaps a little baby bhang? No, I can see, you prefer El Diablito. Or bambalacha? Juju? Laughing weed?
2004		(ref. to 1957) C. Mintrom Tommy Adderley 111: Though Tommy had had his first experience of drugs with laughing weed, on the boats, back in 1957.