make a laughingstock of

make a laughingstock of idiom
Lay open to ridicule, as in They made a laughingstock of the chairman by inviting him to the wrong meeting-place, or She felt she was making a laughingstock of herself, always wearing the wrong clothes for the occasion. The noun laughingstock replaced the earlier mockingstock and sportingstock, now obsolete. The idiom was first recorded in 1667.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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