farce

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A situation that is absurd or ridiculous, often because it is so badly handled.

   The trial turned into a complete farce.

2. 2
   noun

   A comic play full of exaggerated and improbable situations.

   The theatre is staging a French farce full of slammed doors and mistaken identities.

Simplified etymology

Farce was borrowed in late Middle English from a French word meaning “stuffing,” which was also its first English sense. In the mid-16th century it was applied to comic interludes “stuffed” into religious plays, then extended to a complete comic play.

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.

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