to laugh my head off
- idiom
- Informal
- I'll wake up any minute and laugh my head off.
Examples
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He laughed his head off.
Fiction book (2000) -
I laugh my head off.
Blog text (7) -
I would just laugh my head off.
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I was laughing my head off.
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You laughed your head off when you heard it at the party.
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I laughed my head off.
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We laughed our heads off.
Fiction book (2001) -
If anyone had told me this six weeks ago, I'd have laughed my head off.
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Somewhere, Aaron Sorkin is laughing his head off.
Blog text (17) -
Whenever I watch that comedy movie, I laugh my head off.
Synonyms
To laugh loudly and without control
Laugh loudly and without control
Start laughing very hard and cannot stop
To suddenly start laughing loudly and not be able to stop
To laugh suddenly and loudly without control
To make loud sounds you cannot stop because something is very funny
To laugh very hard
To laugh very hard at something funny online
Laugh so hard that your body shakes
Antonyms
How Intense
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase uses a hyperbolic, idiomatic image (literally removing one's head) to mean 'laugh uncontrollably', so the literal meanings of 'laugh', 'my', 'head' and 'off' do not compositionally yield the intended sense. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words would not reliably infer this conventionalized intensifier without prior exposure, so it is not transparently derivable.
Etymology
The idiom laugh my head off may come from a strong image: someone laughs so hard their head seems ready to come off. That's why it means 'to laugh uncontrollably or very loudly'.