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A buffoon; a merry-andrew; a court fool. This . . . was Yorick's skull, the king's jester. Shak. Dressed in the motley garb that jesters wear. Longfellow.

in a morris dance; a May queen. Afterward, a grotesque character personated in sports and buffoonery by a man in woman's clothes.

One whose business is to make sport for others; a buffoon; a zany; especially, one who attends a mountebank or quack doctor.

One who imitates or mimics, especially one who does so for sport; a copyist; a buffoon. Burke.

Masking; frolic in disguise; buffoonery. The mummery of foreign strollers. Fenton.

To exceed in buffoonery. [Obs.] B. Jonson.

An assumption of buffoonery to cover some serious purpose. [R.] Donaldson.

Aridiculous character, or an old dotard, in the Italian comedy; also, a buffoon in pantomimes. Addison. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon. Shak.

The character or performances of a pantaloon; buffoonery. [R.] Lamb.

A merry-andrew; a buffoon. [Obs.] Addison.

A wit; a humorist; a buffoon. [Obs.]

The buffoon or harlequin of a puppet show. Punch and Judy, a puppet show in which a comical little hunchbacked Punch, with a large nose, engages in altercation with his wife Judy.

A punch; a buffoon; originally, in a puppet show, a character represented as fat, short, and humpbacked. Spectator.

terized by great boastfulness and poltroonery; hence, a person of like characteristics; a buffoon.

Such as befits a buffoon or vulgar jester; grossly opprobrious or loudly jocose in language; scurrilous; as, scurrile taunts. The wretched affectation of scurrile laughter. Cowley. A scurrile or obscene jest will better advance you at the court of Charles than father's ancient name. Sir W. Scott.

That which is scurrile or scurrilous; gross or obscene language; low buffoonery; vulgar abuse. Interrupting prayers and sermons with clamor and scurrility. Macaulay.

he low and indecent language of the meaner sort of people, or such as only the license of buffoons can warrant; as, a scurrilous fellow.

The buffoon of the old English moralities, or moral dramas, having the name sometimes of one vice, sometimes of another, or of Vice itself; -- called also Iniquity.

A merry-andrew; a buffoon. Then write that I may follow, and so be Thy echo, thy debtor, thy foil, thy zany. Donne. Preacher at once, and zany of thy age. Pope.

State or character of a zany; buffoonery. Coleridge. H. Morley.