Laughable means so ridiculous or absurd that it deserves to be laughed at. When something is laughable, it fails to be impressive or convincing in such an obvious way that it provokes laughter. A laughable excuse is one nobody believes because it's so obviously made up. A laughable attempt at cheating is so clumsy that everyone notices immediately.

The word often carries a dismissive tone. If a bully makes a laughable threat, it means the threat is so silly or empty that no one takes it seriously. When a team's laughable performance means they lost 47 to 3, their effort was so poor it was almost funny, though probably not to them.

Sometimes people describe their own past attempts as laughable when looking back: “My first attempt at juggling was laughable, but I kept practicing.” Here the word is gentler, acknowledging that early failures are normal steps toward improvement.

Laughable suggests something falls so short of being good or believable that laughter feels like the natural response. It's bad to such a degree that it becomes almost amusing.