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From Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, many of us are familiar with farce in its dramatic sense. However, when farce first appeared in English, it had to do with cookery, not comedy. In the 14th century, English adopted farce from Middle French with its original meaning of "forcemeat"—that is, a highly seasoned, minced meat or fish often served as a stuffing. In the 16th century, English imported the word again, this time to refer to a kind of knockabout comedy already popular in France. French farce had its origins in the 13th-century practice of "stuffing" Latin church texts with explanatory phrases. By the 15th century, a similar practice of inserting unscripted buffoonery into religious plays had arisen. Such farces—which included clowning, acrobatics, reversal of social roles, and indecency—soon developed into a distinct dramatic genre and spread rapidly in various forms throughout Europe.
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Examples of farce in a Sentence
Declan Gallagher, EW.com, 29 Sep. 2024
Its speed satisfies the demands of farce and then some.
—Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post, 19 Sep. 2024
Evan Grant, Dallas News, 28 Oct. 2020
As the season progresses, though, the pathos largely gives way to farce.
—Kristen Baldwin, EW.com, 23 Aug. 2021
See all Example Sentences for farce 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'farce.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Farce.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/farce. Accessed 6 Oct. 2024.
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