Clown

How to spell clown

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce clown

What does clown mean?

1. nounA comic entertainer, typically with exaggerated make-up and costume, who performs at circuses, parties, or shows.
2. nounA person who behaves foolishly or who is not taken seriously.
3. verbTo behave in a silly or comic way, often to amuse others.

Clown in a sentence

• noun

  A clown in baggy trousers handed balloons to the children.

• noun

  Some clown parked across two spaces in the busy car park.

• verb

  The boys would clown around at the back of the classroom.

• noun

  The circus hired a new clown for the summer tour.

• noun

  He acted like a complete clown during the serious meeting.

• verb

  She likes to clown about whenever the camera comes out.

Where does clown come from?

Language of origin: Other

Clown is a word of genuinely uncertain origin that surfaces in English around the 1560s, first meaning a country bumpkin or rustic rather than a circus entertainer. Most scholars trace it to a Scandinavian or Low German source: compare the Icelandic klunni and the North Frisian klönne, both describing a clumsy, oafish person, and the Old Norse klunni for a boor. The original sense was social, an unsophisticated peasant, and from there it slid easily to mean a foolish or comic figure on the stage. By Shakespeare's time the word already named a stock comic role, and the modern image of the brightly painted circus and pantomime performer grew out of that theatrical use over the following centuries. Because the early forms are not well recorded, the exact path remains debated, but the spelling has stayed reassuringly simple, sounding out as it looks.

How the word is built

• clown (single root, no productive prefix or suffix; the base word stands alone)