left in stitches
- idiom
- Informal
:
partiéndose de risa
- The comedian's jokes left the audience in stitches from start to finish.
Examples
-
After watching that hilarious movie, we were all in stitches and couldn't stop laughing.
-
Seriously, the whole "My crooks are better than your crooks" argument leaves me in stitches every time! ... and implying that a guy's wife stole a loaf of bread or something in comparison to the Obama crew stealing a trillion bucks of my kid's generation's money is just comedy gold!
Blog text (8) -
His funny impersonations had everyone in stitches, making it a memorable night.
Synonyms
Laughing a lot because something is very funny
Antonyms
How Amused
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although 'left' (caused to be) and 'in' are compositionally transparent, the noun 'stitches' (sewing or medical sutures) gives no obvious clue to the meaning 'laughing very hard.' The phrase 'in stitches' is an idiomatic metaphor whose connection to literal stitches is not predictable and is not directly inferable by a B1 learner who only knows the constituents, so it should be treated as opaque.
Etymology
Left in stitches comes from the idea of a stitch meaning a sharp pain in the side that can happen when you laugh very hard. So, if a joke left you 'laughing very hard', it 'left you in stitches'.