Several parts combine into one character.

笑 is a wonderfully poetic compound ideograph: ⺮ (bamboo) on top + 夭 (yāo, "young / tender / a person with head tilted to one side"). The combined image is dynamic — bamboo swaying and rustling in the wind above, and a person with head tilted at a charming angle below. Together they capture the physical phenomenon of laughter: shoulders shaking like wind-bent bamboo, head tilted back in mirth. The etymology is unusual in its sensory richness — most CJK characters are static images, but 笑 is essentially animated.

Korean reading "so." Korean uses 笑 to subdivide "the colors of laughter" with surgical precision: 微笑 (miso, faint smile), 失笑 (silso, "lost laugh" = involuntary chuckle / scoffing laugh), 爆笑 (pokso, "exploding laugh" = burst of laughter), 冷笑 (naengso, "cold smile" = sneering / sardonic smile), 苦笑 (goso, bitter smile), and the famous Buddhist phrase 拈華微笑 (yeomhwa-miso, "the smile at the picked flower" — referring to the moment when Buddha held up a single flower and only Mahakashyapa understood the silent teaching, smiling faintly; the founding moment of Zen lineage).

Mandarin xiào, 4th tone. 笑 (xiào, to laugh / smile), 微笑 (wēixiào, smile), 大笑 (dàxiào, big laugh), 开玩笑 (kāi wánxiào, "to open joking" = to joke / kid around — extremely common spoken expression), 哈哈大笑 (hāhā dàxiào, "haha big-laugh" = guffaw). Modern Chinese internet slang sometimes uses 笑 alone as an indicator of amusement, equivalent to lol.

Japanese on-reading ショウ (shō) — 微笑 (bishō, smile), 爆笑 (bakushō, burst of laughter), 苦笑 (kushō, bitter smile). Kun-readings split into two: わらう (warau, to laugh) — 笑う (warau), 笑顔 (egao, "laughing face" = smiling face — note the unusual reading where 笑 is read as e); えむ (emu, to smile faintly) — 微笑む (hohoemu, to smile gently), 笑み (emi, smile). And the most distinctive Japanese internet usage: writing 笑 in parentheses (笑) at the end of a sentence is the Japanese internet equivalent of "lol" — predating the more recent slang 草 (kusa, "grass") that came from the visual repetition of w (warai = laughter) looking like grass blades.

Memory aid: bamboo (⺮) swaying above a person tilted with mirth (夭) — laughter as wind-bent bamboo of the body.