subrisive

English

Etymology

Borrowed from New Latin subrisivus (“amusing”), from Latin subrīdeō (“to smile”).

Adjective

subrisive (comparative more subrisive, superlative most subrisive)

1. (literary, rare) Playful, tongue-in-cheek.
   • 1885, Grant Allen, Charles Darwin, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton and Company, page 9:

     This half-hearted and somewhat subrisive denial, however, must be taken merely as a concession to the Sorbonne and to the fashionable exegesis of his own day; and, even so, the Sorbonne was too much in the end for the philosophic thinker.

Related terms

• subrision
• subrisory