Meaning
To be secretly amused, especially at someone else's expense, while keeping a straight or even solemn face. The laughter is concealed rather than shared, so the phrase usually carries a note of private mischief, contempt or quiet schadenfreude. Informal; almost always implies concealed amusement at another's expense, so it can sound unkind. Regional use: General English (clothing origin).
Origin
The established form replaced the earlier 'laugh in one's sleeve', and that older version is genuinely old: the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms reports it was already a proverb by the mid-1500s and appears in John Heywood's 1546 proverb collection, while Richard Brinsley Sheridan used it memorably in The Rivals (1775): 'Tis false, sir, I know you are laughing in your sleeve.' The image rests on the roomy, loose sleeves of earlier dress, voluminous enough to hide a smile behind a raised arm. The substitution of 'up' for 'in' is a later development, essentially of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after which 'laugh up your sleeve' became the standard wording and the older form faded into literary use.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- laugh in one's sleeve (earlier form)
- laughing up one's sleeve
- smile in one's sleeve
- snigger up one's sleeve
Usage Examples
- The interns laughed up their sleeves every time the manager mispronounced the client's name.
- He kept a diplomatic expression, but you could see he was laughing up his sleeve at the absurd instructions.
- Rival growers laughed in their sleeves when the co-op planted vines on that stony hillside, until the wine won a medal.