COMEDY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does comedy mean? 

• COMEDY (noun)
  The noun COMEDY has 2 senses:

1. light and humorous drama with a happy ending

2. a comic incident or series of incidents

  Familiarity information: COMEDY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMEDY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Light and humorous drama with a happy ending

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("comedy" is a kind of...):

drama (the literary genre of works intended for the theater)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "comedy"):

black comedy (comedy that uses black humor)

commedia dell'arte (Italian comedy of the 16th to 18th centuries improvised from standardized situations and stock characters)

dark comedy (a comedy characterized by grim or satiric humor; a comedy having gloomy or disturbing elements)

farce; farce comedy; travesty (a comedy characterized by broad satire and improbable situations)

high comedy (a sophisticated comedy; often satirizing genteel society)

low comedy (a comedy characterized by slapstick and burlesque)

melodrama (an extravagant comedy in which action is more salient than characterization)

seriocomedy; tragicomedy (a comedy with serious elements or overtones)

sitcom; situation comedy (a humorous drama based on situations that might arise in day-to-day life)

slapstick (a boisterous comedy with chases and collisions and practical jokes)

Antonym:

tragedy (drama in which the protagonist is overcome by some superior force or circumstance; excites terror or pity)

Derivation:

comic (of or relating to or characteristic of comedy)

comical (arousing or provoking laughter)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A comic incident or series of incidents

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

clowning; comedy; drollery; funniness

Hypernyms ("comedy" is a kind of...):

fun; play; sport (verbal wit or mockery (often at another's expense but not to be taken seriously))

Derivation:

comic; comical (arousing or provoking laughter)

 Context examples 

The whole scene was an unutterable mixture of comedy and pathos.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I have always protested against comedy, and this is comedy in its worst form.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

She was not deceived in her own expectation of pleasure; the comedy so well suspended her care that no one, observing her during the first four acts, would have supposed she had any wretchedness about her.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Who, as he saw Sheridan and Fox eagerly arguing as to whether Caleb Baldwin, the Westminster costermonger, could hold his own with Isaac Bittoon, the Jew, would have guessed that the one was the deepest political philosopher in Europe, and that the other would be remembered as the author of the wittiest comedy and of the finest speech of his generation?

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

For a time, so steeped was he in the plays and in the many favorite passages that impressed themselves almost without effort on his brain, that all the world seemed to shape itself into forms of Elizabethan tragedy or comedy and his very thoughts were in blank verse.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Tragedy may be your choice, but it will certainly appear that comedy chuses you.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I feel as if I could be anything or everything; as if I could rant and storm, or sigh or cut capers, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

“An afterpiece instead of a comedy,” said Mr. Bertram.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

There were, in fact, so many things to be attended to, so many people to be pleased, so many best characters required, and, above all, such a need that the play should be at once both tragedy and comedy, that there did seem as little chance of a decision as anything pursued by youth and zeal could hold out.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

After a short pause, however, the subject still continued, and was discussed with unabated eagerness, every one's inclination increasing by the discussion, and a knowledge of the inclination of the rest; and though nothing was settled but that Tom Bertram would prefer a comedy, and his sisters and Henry Crawford a tragedy, and that nothing in the world could be easier than to find a piece which would please them all, the resolution to act something or other seemed so decided as to make Edmund quite uncomfortable.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)