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Clown   /klaʊn/   Listen
noun
Clown  n.  
1.
A man of coarse nature and manners; an awkward fellow; an ill-bred person; a boor.
2.
One who works upon the soil; a rustic; a churl. "The clown, the child of nature, without guile."
3.
The fool or buffoon in a play, circus, etc. "The clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle o'the sere."



verb
Clown  v. i.  To act as a clown; with it. (Obs.) "Beshrew me, he clowns it properly indeed."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Clown" Quotes from Famous Books



... sufferings to be greater merely on this account. They were often abused and beaten by others, and sometimes put in danger of their lives. It was a common question put to a Quaker in those days, who addressed a great man in this new and simple manner, "why you ill bred clown do you thou me?" The rich and mighty of those times thought themselves degraded by this mode of address, as reducing them from a plural magnitude to a singular, or individual, or simple station in life. "The use of thou, says George Fox, was a sore cut ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... I am not a foe. Do not fly me as a lamb flies the wolf, or a dove the hawk. It is for love I pursue you. You make me miserable, for fear you should fall and hurt yourself on these stones, and I should be the cause. Pray run slower, and I will follow slower. I am no clown, no rude peasant. Jupiter is my father, and I am lord of Delphos and Tenedos, and know all things, present and future. I am the god of song and the lyre. My arrows fly true to the mark; but alas! An arrow more fatal than mine has pierced ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... globe of Menippe, I saw the giant, partly in profile against the sky, with his back bent and his hands upon his knees, watching me with an occasional approving nod of his big head. He looked so funny standing there on his little seven-by-nine world, like a clown on a performing ball, that, despite my terrible situation, I shook my sides with laughter. There was no echo in the profundity of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... sweet country school-girls working at one flower, warbling one song, growing together like a double cherry. Of England, is the picture of the hounds with "ears that sweep away the morning dew"; from England, all this out-door woodland life, the clown's play and the clowns themselves,—Bottom with his inimitable conceit, and his fellows, Snug, Quince, and the rest. English is all Puck's fairy lore, the cowslips tall, the red-hipt humble-bee, Oberon's bank, the pansy love-in-idleness, and all ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan

... I suppose, is intended for our ears by the Duke of Styria. He probably wishes us to know that he is against us," said Charles. "He wanted our daughter for his clown of a son, and our contempt for his claims rankles in his heart. He cannot inflame Wuertemberg, and Wuertemberg cannot ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major


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