Sardonicism is the expression of derision, cynicism

Cynicism (contemporary)

Cynicism is an attitude or state of mind characterized by a general distrust of other's apparent motives, or a general lack of faith or hope in the human race. It is a form of jaded negativity, and other times, realistic criticism or skepticism...

 or skeptical humor variously through comment, gesture or writing.

Origin

The etymology of sardonicism as both a word and concept is uncertain. The Byzantine Greek

Byzantine

Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...

 Suda

Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

 traces its earliest roots to the notion of grinning in the face of danger, or curling one's lips back at evil. One explanation for a later morph to its more familiar form and connection to laughter (supported by the Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

) appears to stem from an ancient belief that ingesting the sardonion plant from Sardinia

Sardinia

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...

  would result in convulsions resembling laughter and, ultimately, death. In Theory and History of Folklore, Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.- Biography :...

 discusses alleged examples of ritual laughter accompanying death and killing, all involving groups. These he characterized as sardonic laughter.

Among the very ancient people of Sardinia, who were called Sardi or Sardoni, it was customary to kill old people. While killing their old people, the Sardi laughed loudly. This is the origin of notorious sardonic laughter (Eugen Fehrle, 1930), now meaning cruel, malicious laughter. In light of our findings things begin to look different. Laughter accompanies the passage from death to life; it creates life and accompanies birth. Consequently, laughter accompanying killing transforms death into a new birth, nullifies murder as such, and is an act of piety that transforms death into a new life.

A root form first appears in Homer as the Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 sardánios, Odysseus

Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

, smiling "sardonically" when attacked by one of his wife's erstwhile suitors upon his return to Ithaca

Ithaca

Ithaca or Ithaka is an island located in the Ionian Sea, in Greece, with an area of and a little more than three thousand inhabitants. It is also a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. It lies off the northeast coast of Kefalonia and...

. From the evolved the , thence the , and ultimately the familiar English adjectival form, sardonic.

Hemlock water dropwort

In 2009 scientists at the University of Eastern Piedmont

University of Eastern Piedmont

The University of Eastern Piedmont Amedeo Avogadro is a university located in Alessandria, Novara and Vercelli, Italy. It was founded in 1998 and is organized in 7 faculties...

 in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 claimed to have identified hemlock water dropwort

Water dropwort

The water dropworts, Oenanthe , are a genus of plants in the family Apiaceae. Most of the species grow in damp ground, in marshes or in water....

 (Oenanthe crocata) as the plant responsible for producing the sardonic grin. This plant is the most-likely candidate for the "sardonic herb," which was a neurotoxic

Neurotoxin

A neurotoxin is a toxin that acts specifically on nerve cells , usually by interacting with membrane proteins such as ion channels. Some sources are more general, and define the effect of neurotoxins as occurring at nerve tissue...

 plant used for the ritual killing

Human sacrifice

Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...

 of elderly people in pre-Roman Sardinia. When these people were unable to support themselves, they were intoxicated with this herb and then dropped from a high rock or beaten to death.