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scorn or contempt; sportive. Broome. A chapter upon German rhetoric would be in the same ludicrous predicament as Van Troil's chapter on the snakes of Iceland, which delivers its business in one summary sentence, announcing, that snakes in Iceland -- there are none. De Quincey.

One who east human flesh. [Ludicrous] Shak.

Odd; fantastic; fanciful; grotesque; ludicrous. The antic postures of a merry-andrew. Addison. The Saxons . . . worshiped many idols, barbarous in name, some monstrous, all antic for shape. Fuller.

A ludicrous corruption of the Latin word ergo, therefore. Shak.

A skeleton. [Ludicrous] Shak.

A ludicrous descent from the elevated to the low, in writing or speech; anticlimax.

fretting, the chafing of a horse's belly with a girth. Johnson. -- Belly timber, food. [Ludicrous] Prior. -- Belly worm, a worm that breeds or lives in the belly (stomach or intestines). Johnson.

Ludicrous representation; exaggerated parody; grotesque satire. Burlesque is therefore of two kinds; the first represents mean persons in the accouterments of heroes, the other describes great persons acting and speaking like the basest among the people. Addison.

amusing character, based upon the foibles of individuals, the manners of society, or the ludicrous events or accidents of life; a play in which mirth predominates and the termination of the plot is happy; -- opposed to tragedy. With all the vivacity if comedy. Macaulay. Are come to play a pleasant comedy. Shak.…

Causing mirth; ludicrous. "Comic shows." Shak.

A conversational game, in which questions and answers are made so as to involve ludicrous combinations of ideas. Pepys. To be at cross-purposes, to misunderstand or to act counter to one another without intending it; -- said of persons.

es of a newspaper directly across the page, instead of down the columns, thus producing a ludicrous combination of ideas.

One who is defended. [R. & Ludicrous]

Queer, and fitted to provoke laughter; ludicrous from oddity; amusing and strange.

t are somewhat fade." Jeffrey. His masculine taste gave him a sense of something fade and ludicrous. De Quincey.

w 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. Dryden.

Pertaining to farce; appropriated to farce; ludicrous; unnatural; unreal. They deny the characters to be farcical, because they are Gay. -- Far"ci*cal*ly, adv. -Far"ci*cal*ness, n.

strangely formed; whimsical; extravagant; of irregular forms and proportions; fantastic; ludicrous; antic. "Grotesque design." Dryden. "Grotesque incidents." Macaulay.

To play the droll; to make sport by playing ludicrous tricks.

Combining the heroic and the ludicrous; denoting high burlesque; as, a heroicomic poem.