clown

Likely from North Germanic, akin to Icelandic klunni (“klutz”) and Old Frisian klönne (“klutz”). Less likely from Latin colonus (“colonist, farmer”), although learned awareness of this term may have influenced semantic development.

• enPR: kloun, IPA^(key): /klaʊn/
• Rhymes: -aʊn

A clown

clown (plural clowns)

1. A slapstick performance artist often associated with a circus and typically characterised by bright, oversized clothing, a red nose, face paint, and a brightly colored wig.
   • 2008, Lich King, "Black Metal Sucks", Toxic Zombie Onslaught.

     Over there in Norway, the churches all burn down / Let's go dress in goth clothes and get painted like a clown

2. A person who acts in a silly fashion.
3. (chiefly Britain) A stupid person.
4. (obsolete) A man of coarse nature and manners; an awkward fellow; an illbred person; a boor.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir Philip Sidney to this entry?)

   • Timothy Nourse, Campania Foelix (1700), pp. 15–16

     […] three things ought always to be kept under: a mastiff dog, a stone horse and a clown; and really I think a snarling, cross-grained clown to be the most unlucky beast of three.

5. (obsolete) One who works upon the soil; a rustic; a churl; a yokel.
   • Cowper

     The clown, the child of nature, without guile.

   • Samuel Johnson

     He […] began to descend to familiar questions, endeavouring to accommodate his discourse to the grossness of rustic understandings. The clowns soon found that he did not know wheat from rye, and began to despise him; one of the boys, by pretending to show him a bird's nest, decoyed him into a ditch; […]

• (person who acts in a silly fashion): buffoon, fool

• clown beetle
• class clown
• clown doctor
• clownfish
• clownish

clown (third-person singular simple present clowns, present participle clowning, simple past and past participle clowned)

1. (intransitive) To act in a silly or playful fashion.

• clown about (British)
• clown around

• coulrophobia
• jester
• jackpudding

Borrowed from English clown.

• IPA^(key): /klɑu̯n/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: clown
• Rhymes: -ɑu̯n

clown m (plural clowns, diminutive clowntje n)

1. clown (entertainer)

• clownsneus

• august
• harlekijn
• paljas
• pierrot
• nar
• witte clown
• zot

From English clown

• IPA^(key): /klun/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Homophone: clowns

clown m (plural clowns)

1. clown (performer)
2. clown (person who acts in a comic way)

• “clown” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

clown m (invariable)

1. clown (artist)

• pagliaccio

• clon

From English clown.

• IPA^(key): /klon/, [klõn]

clown m (plural clownes)

1. clown (circus performance artist)

• payaso m

From English clown.

• IPA^(key): /ˈklaʊn/

clown c

1. clown

• clownfisk

• clown in Svenska Akademiens ordbok online.

• IPA^(key): /klɔu̯n/

Borrowed from English clown.

clown m (plural clowniaid)

1. clown

• closwn (colloquial, first-person singular conditional)

clown

1. first-person plural present and future of cloi
2. first-person singular imperfect and conditional of cloi
3. (literary) first-person plural imperative of cloi