Aug 19, 2010

Sardonic Laughter

On the etymology of 'sardonic laughter', from Laughter: A Scientific Investigation by Robert Provine:

The term “sardonic laughter,” referring to the bitter, mocking laughter of derision, has a rich if dark etymology. The ancients who coined the term were referring to the humorless laughter and smiling produced by a deadly plant native to Sardinia, probably the herb known variously as march (cursed) crowfoot, buttercup, or wild parsley (Ranunculus sceleratus). The toxic effect of the plant was well known in ancient times, because the derivative expression had wide early use, as in The Odyssey, when Odysseus “smiled in his anger a very sardonic smile.” Writing in the second century AD, Pausanias noted of Sardinia, “The whole island if free of lethal drugs except one weed; the deadly herb looks like celery, but they say if you eat it you die of laughing. That is why Homer and the people of his time speak of something very unhealthy as a Sardonic laugh.” Although the details of this mysterious herb and its effects are lost in the fog of history, the term risus sardonicus, literally “laughter of Sardinia,” but now usually referring only to smiling, survives in modern medicine as a key symptom of tetanus (“lockjaw”) and strychnine poisoning. (In antiquity, I suspect that the herb produced only grimaced smiling, as in The Odyssey, with “laughter,” if any was ever present, the result of rhythmic gasping during seizures.)

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