FARCE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Farce

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/fɑrs/ Listen

noun

Farce n.

(Cookery) Stuffing, or mixture of viands, like that used on dressing a fowl; forcemeat.

A low style of comedy; a dramatic composition marked by low humor, generally written with little regard to regularity or method, and abounding with ludicrous incidents and expressions. "Farce is that in poetry which "grotesque" is in a picture: the persons and action of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false."

Ridiculous or empty show; as, a mere farce. "The farce of state."

verb

Farce v. t. (past & past part. farced, pres. part. farcing)

To stuff with forcemeat; hence, to fill with mingled ingredients; to fill full; to stuff. (Obs.) "The first principles of religion should not be farced with school points and private tenets." "His tippet was aye farsed full of knives."

To render fat. (Obs.) "If thou wouldst farce thy lean ribs."

To swell out; to render pompous. (Obs.) "Farcing his letter with fustian."

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Etymology of 'Farce'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Farce" Quotes from Famous Books

... led to her side, and reached out his hand gropingly, and in very pity of his blindness she took it. Questions were asked him, to which he responded and similar questions were asked her, to which she made no reply. The whole ceremony was a farce, and she had agreed to it only because it gave her a little extra time, and every minute counted. From the moment the magistrate pronounced the formula which made them, in the eyes of the Soviet law at any rate, man and wife, Boolba never loosened ...

— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... coquette she was, heartless and honorless, nothing more, and yet he must risk his life in defence of a thing which did not exist any longer, and which, he now strongly suspected, had from the first been nothing but a delusion on his part—her honor! What a ludicrous farce! ...

— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre.—MONTAIGNE: Of ...

— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... provided the vivisector may himself appoint the investigators, and define the limitations of the inquiry. It needs but little discernment to foresee that an inquiry so conducted may be no better than a farce, and conduce to no real change in the present obscurity. To be of any value the commission of inquiry regarding vivisection must be so intelligent regarding all phases of the practice that it shall know how to penetrate to hidden recesses, where things not desired to be revealed shall ...

— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... Verena's breath away; she didn't suppose you could hear any one say such a thing as that in the nineteenth century, even the least advanced. It was of a piece with his denouncing the spread of education; he thought the spread of education a gigantic farce—people stuffing their heads with a lot of empty catchwords that prevented them from doing their work quietly and honestly. You had a right to an education only if you had an intelligence, and if you looked at the matter with any desire to see things as they are you ...

— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

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