Shy laugh the French dismissed (5)
I believe the answer is:
chuck
'shy' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'laugh the french dismissed' is the wordplay.
'laugh' becomes 'chuckle' (chuckling is a kind of laughing).
'the french' becomes 'le' ('the' in French).
'dismissed' is a deletion indicator.
'chuckle' with 'le' taken away is 'CHUCK'.
(Other definitions for chuck that I've seen before include "beef" , "Type of steak" , "Give up" , "Hurl" , "Toss" .)