Caricature

How to spell caricature

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce caricature

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does caricature mean?

1. nounA picture or description of someone that comically exaggerates their distinctive features.
2. verbTo represent someone in a way that comically exaggerates their features or traits.

Caricature in a sentence

• noun

  The street artist drew a caricature with a huge nose and tiny body.

• verb

  The columnist tends to caricature politicians as greedy fools.

• noun

  The cartoon was an unfair caricature of the new mayor.

• verb

  Comedians often caricature public figures for an easy laugh.

Where does caricature come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word travels back to the Latin verb carricare, meaning 'to load a wagon', which was built on carrus, a 'wheeled vehicle' (also the ancestor of 'car' and 'carry'). In Italian that sense of loading developed figuratively into caricare, 'to load, to overload, to exaggerate', and from it came the noun caricatura: a portrait that has been deliberately 'overloaded' so that one or two features are pushed to a comic extreme. French borrowed the Italian word as caricature, and English took it from French in the middle of the 1700s. The idea of 'piling on' an exaggeration is a useful memory hook, and it also explains the spelling: the middle keeps the -i- of the Italian carica, and the ending is the noun-forming -ature rather than a simpler -iture.

How the word is built

• caric- (from Italian caricare: to load or exaggerate)
• -ature (noun suffix forming the result of an action)