farce
nounverbattested in dialogue
- United Kingdom//fɑːs//
- United States//fɑɹs//
A style of humor marked by broad improbabilities with little regard to regularity or method.
noun
- 1
A style of humor marked by broad improbabilities with little regard to regularity or method.
- 2
A motion picture or play featuring this style of humor.
The farce that we saw last night had us laughing and shaking our heads at the same time.
Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language[…]; his clerks […] understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there.
- 3
A situation abounding with ludicrous incidents.
The first month of labor negotiations was a farce.
The first match in the magnificent new national stadium was a Euro 2012 qualifier between Romania and France that soon descended into farce as the pitch cut up and players struggled to maintain their footing. Amorebieta at times seemed to be paying homage to that game, but nobody else seemed to have a problem; it was just that Falcao was far better than him.
- 4
A ridiculous or empty show.
The United States, he declared, was "a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed, circumcised Jew bastards."
- 5
An elaborate lie.
- 6
Forcemeat, stuffing.
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French farce (“farce (style of humor); stuffing”) (in the latter sense, via Middle English fars, farsse), from Old French farse, from Medieval Latin farsa, from the feminine perfect passive participle of Latin farciō (“to stuff”). The theatre sense alludes to the pleasant and varied character of certain stuffed food items. Doublet of farse.
verb
- 1
To stuff with forcemeat or other food items.
The lunch […] consisted […] of […] lobster mayonnaise, cold game sausages, an immense veal and ham pie farced with eggs, truffles, and numberless delicious flavours; besides kickshaws, creams and sweetmeats.
- 2
figurativeTo fill full; to stuff.
The first principles of religion should not be farced with school points and private tenets.
- 3
obsoleteTo make fat.
[I]f thou would’ſt farce thy leane Ribs with it [pork] too, they would not (like ragged Lathes) rub out ſo many Dublets as they do: […]
- 4
obsoleteTo swell out; to render pompous.
farcing his letter with fustian
- 5
Variant of farseAlternative form of farse (“to insert vernacular paraphrases into (a Latin liturgy)”).
Etymology
From Middle English farcen, from Old French farsir, farcir, from Latin farciō (“to cram, stuff”). Doublet of farse.
Forms
- plural
- farces
- past tense
- farced
- past participle
- farced
- present participle
- farcing
- third person singular
- farces
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