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Glite Dictionary
🤣 Physical comedy 😂 Exaggerated funny 🔨 A noise device
slapstick

slapstick

4 5.5
Full of clumsy, noisy actions meant to make people laugh
  • adjective
  • /ˈslæpˌstɪk/
translation icon : exagerado
  • Playwright Nottage deftly combines nearly slapstick comedy with real questions about relationships between the haves and the have-nots.
  • slapstick humor
  • slapstick comedy

I mean, I have a psychological thriller right now and I'm doing a lot of drama, but I started writing like slapstick type stuff and making people laugh from theatre.

Examples

  • "The Skeletons," a very funny, almost slapstick piece, unusual for O'Hara, depicts a deeply dysfunctional, defiantly conventional family that suddenly falls apart.

    Academic text (1997)

  • And he hosted a cable access television show with a slapstick theme that was called "Low Comedy."

    Blog text (7)

  • I have to admit that The Presidential Reality Show, as Gerald Celente calls it, is entertaining in a slapstick manner.

    Blog text (1)

  • Early movies were mainly slapstick comedies and spectacles designed to generate cheap laughs or thrills.

    Blog text (17)

  • Several of the younger (middle school) White boys listed Forrest Gump as a favorite movie, and they also liked the slapstick humor of Jim Carrey's Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber.

    Academic text (1999)

  • Janet Evanovich has produced twelve slapstick mysteries around the misadventures of Stephanie Plum, a young, inept bounty hunter in Trenton, New Jersey.

    Academic text (2006)

  • The audience erupted in laughter as the actor tripped over a chair in a slapstick routine.

  • In the film, the characters often engage in slapstick humor, making exaggerated movements that never fail to entertain.

  • The comedian's act was filled with slapstick moments, like slipping on banana peels and falling into a tub of water.

Synonyms

comic
vsslapstick
289 1.9

Funny and meant to make people laugh

is narrower and focuses on loud physical action to provoke laughter
comical
vsslapstick
39 3.1

Making people laugh because it is silly or unusual

is specifically about exaggerated physical activity rather than odd or silly events
slapsticky
vsslapstick
  • Informal
1 7.9

Funny in a silly physical way like clumsy falls and loud actions

is the standard or traditional form rather than the variant spelling
knockabout
vsslapstick
  • UK
8.1

Comedy with loud, physical jokes and rough action

is more about exaggerated staged physical silliness than general rough energy

Surface Forms

slapstick positive

Morphology

slapstick = slapstick (opaque) = slap + stick

The adjective is a straightforward relational use of the noun 'slapstick', so its meaning is directly recoverable from the base noun.

Etymology

A helpful way to remember slapstick as an adjective is to think of the wooden 'slap' sound the word comes from: slap ('a quick hit') + stick ('a piece of wood'). So calling something slapstick means it is full of loud, physical, and clumsy jokes meant to make the audience laugh.