clown prince
- noun
- /klaʊn prɪns/
:
príncipe de los payasos
- Max Patkin was known as the clown prince of baseball for his entertaining antics on and off the field.
Examples
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As the clown prince of the festival, he delighted audiences with his unique style of humor and captivating performances.
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Everyone loved the clown prince of comedy, who always brought laughter to the stage with his playful antics.
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Drunken escapades at parties have only made Prince Harry appear more like one of us, but is he really more clown prince than crown prince?
Antonyms
15
7.5
A performer who plays a serious role in a comedy to make the other person's jokes funnier
1
4.6
A calm, quiet way of behaving that shows you are thinking about important things
Surface Forms
Morphology
clown + prince
The constituents 'clown' (comic entertainer) and 'prince' (a term for a high-ranking or eminent person) can combine to suggest a prominent or leading comic figure, so a learner who knows both words could plausibly infer 'a leading/clownish star of comedy'. However, the use of 'prince' metaphorically to mean 'leading figure' is figurative and relies on the pattern 'X prince/king of Y', which may not be fully predictable to all B1 learners, making the expression only partially transparent.
Etymology
Clown prince joins the silly image of a clown with the important image of a prince. One popular story says people used this playful title for the funniest or most famous comic in a group, so it means 'a leading figure in comedy'.