The suggestion of some ulterior motive for the affair, particularly ambition, was risible in a way that the widow could not have imagined.
But that itself has some value; if, for example, I knew for sure that other people found the attention paid to anything with the suffix "dashian" to be in some way risible, I would feel better.
"Ambition is risible in many ways, but aspiration is just acknowledging that there's something more and you'd like to try it.
He said: "Those elements are risible and in many ways pathetic.
Rather, the health system in the United States is in many ways so risible that it comes across as droll even when a dour German-born economist describes it.
"Whilst it in no way excuses our risible efforts against him in the Ashes, it's good to see some of the best batsmen in the world playing Mitch like the proverbial rabbits/deer in the headlights!
It will certainly speak to people in ways that the risible mess that was 2013's Ghosts could not.
However, while it looks good, in a Scorsese-by-numbers kind of way, it has been risible in epic style.
Martin Amis's new book, The Second Plane, was dismissed as "a weak, risible" volume; Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down was condemned as a "maudlin bit of tripe"; and Jonathan Franzen's memoir, The Discomfort Zone, was reviled as "an odious self-portrait of the -artist as a young jackass".
Contemporary writers include Muriel Spark and Alison Lurie, who, in their different ways, poke at the risible assumptions that characterize all self-contained, privileged worlds.
