comedy. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

comedy

SYLLABICATION:	com·e·dy
PRONUNCIATION:	km-d
NOUN:	Inflected forms: pl. com·e·dies 1a. A dramatic work that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone and that usually contains a happy resolution of the thematic conflict. b. The genre made up of such works. 2. A literary or cinematic work of a comic nature or that uses the themes or methods of comedy. 3. Popular entertainment composed of jokes, satire, or humorous performance. 4. The art of composing or performing comedy. 5. A humorous element of life or literature: the human comedy of political campaigns. 6. A humorous occurrence.
IDIOM:	comedy of errors A ludicrous event or sequence of events: The candidate's campaign turned out to be a political comedy of errors.
ETYMOLOGY:	Middle English comedie, from Medieval Latin cmdia, from Latin cmoedia, from Greek kmidia, from kmidos, comic actor : kmos, revel + aoidos, singer (from aeidein, to sing; see wed-² in Appendix I).


The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.