mockery
Americannoun
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ridicule, contempt, or derision.
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a derisive, imitative action or speech.
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a subject or occasion of derision.
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an imitation, especially of a ridiculous or unsatisfactory kind.
- Synonyms:
- mimicry
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a mocking pretense; travesty.
a mockery of justice.
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something absurdly or offensively inadequate or unfitting.
noun
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ridicule, contempt, or derision
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a derisive action or comment
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an imitation or pretence, esp a derisive one
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a person or thing that is mocked
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a person, thing, or action that is inadequate or disappointing
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of mockery
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English moquerie, from Middle French; equivalent to mock + -ery
Explanation
The noun mockery means ridicule or making a fool out of someone. Mockery of your history teacher is unwise just before she grades your mid-term exams. Mockery is making fun of or mocking someone or something. The act of mockery often involves copying someone's behavior or speech, making it look absurd, like a parody. For example, comedians often get laughs with mockery, by pretending to be famous politicians and exaggerating the way they talk or gesture. The expression "to make a mockery of" means to make something appear foolish or absurd, even if that’s not the intent — like a trial that “makes a mockery of justice.”
Vocabulary lists containing mockery
"The Tell-Tale Heart," Vocabulary from the short story
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"On Women's Right to Vote" by Susan B. Anthony
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"Macbeth" Vocabulary from Act III
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Now, after much mockery and controversy, minimalist footwear is hotter than ever.
From Slate ● Jul. 16, 2026
The Dodgers could make a mockery of the National League West by trading for Skubal, who won the last two American League Cy Young awards for the Detroit Tigers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
"To have it suspended for a year makes a mockery of the whole tournament," he said.
From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2026
Instead they have banded together in a rare display of gentle mockery of an organization that doesn’t mess around.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 27, 2026
Kit was in a mood to overlook his mockery.
From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare
Why have our finest actors been forced to make mockeries of themselves, looking like the Jolly Green Giant if he were holding a normal-sized microphone?
From Salon ● Jan. 11, 2026
Mena believes the Black Paintings to be mockeries in the same spirit – cartoons he drew around himself as if the walls were “big sheets of paper”.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 30, 2019
But his daughter Meghan McCain, who has become a kind of spokeswoman for the family, recently called Trump's repeated, onstage mockeries of her father “gross.”
From Washington Post ● Jun. 26, 2018
Boston Dynamics’ creatures are like cruel, surreal techno-parodies of organic life, absurdist mockeries of living things.
From Slate ● Dec. 20, 2013
Probably, therefore, the likeness would not be recognized in Bogotá, but it will always be endeared to us by the memory of the many mockeries suffered from him.
From The Daughter of the Storage And Other Things in Prose and Verse by Howells, William Dean
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
