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From Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, many of us are familiar with farce in its dramatic sense. However, when farce first appeared in English, it had to do with cookery, not comedy. In the 14th century, English adopted farce from Middle French with its original meaning of "forcemeat"—that is, a highly seasoned, minced meat or fish often served as a stuffing. In the 16th century, English imported the word again, this time to refer to a kind of knockabout comedy already popular in France. French farce had its origins in the 13th-century practice of "stuffing" Latin church texts with explanatory phrases. By the 15th century, a similar practice of inserting unscripted buffoonery into religious plays had arisen. Such farces—which included clowning, acrobatics, reversal of social roles, and indecency—soon developed into a distinct dramatic genre and spread rapidly in various forms throughout Europe.
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Examples of farce in a Sentence
Sara Holdren, Vulture, 16 Oct. 2024
Her stunt, though, wrote tragedy and farce into the congressional record.
—Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 23 Oct. 2024
Evan Grant, Dallas News, 28 Oct. 2020
As the season progresses, though, the pathos largely gives way to farce.
—Kristen Baldwin, EW.com, 23 Aug. 2021
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“Farce.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/farce. Accessed 26 Nov. 2024.
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