Noun: burlesque
| Singular | burlesque |
| Plural | burlesques |
Sample Sentences
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Burlesque is therefore of two kinds; the first represents mean persons in the accoutrements of heroes, the other describes great persons acting and speaking like the basest among the people. [1711 December 25 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “FRIDAY, December 15, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 249; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume III, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC:]
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The dull burlesque appeared with impudence, / And pleased by novelty in spite of sense. [1683, John Dryden, The Art of Poetry:]
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“H'm !” he said, “so, so—it is a tragedy in a prologue and three acts. I am going down this afternoon to see the curtain fall for the third time on what […] will prove a good burlesque ; but it all began dramatically enough. It was last Saturday […] that two boys, playing in the little spinney just outside Wembley Park Station, came across three large parcels done up in American cloth. […]” [1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Lisson Grove Mystery”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020:]
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Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to, national representative assemblies, but must turn with horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that sacred institute? [1790 November, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. […], London: […] J[ames] Dodsley, […], →OCLC:]
Nouns inflected like burlesque
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
Borrowed from French burlesque, from Italian burlesco (“parodic”). See: French Nouns '
burlesque', Italian Nouns '
burlesco'.