last laugh

1. 1.

   ultimate success achieved after a near failure (inspired by the saying `he laughs best who laughs last')

   “we had the last laugh after the votes were counted”

   Broadervictory

Questions about last laugh

What does last laugh mean?

last laugh means "ultimate success achieved after a near failure (inspired by the saying `he laughs best who laughs last')".

Is last laugh a common word?

last laugh is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.