Alternatively, directly fromLow German (compareNorth Frisianklönne(“clumsy fellow, klutz”),Dutchkluns(“clumsy fellow, klutz”),Dutchkloen(“uncouth person, lout”)), themselves from the same ultimate source as above.
Unlikely fromLatincolōnus(“colonist, farmer”), although learned awareness of this term may have influenced semantic development.
"The dealers snatched at the state of intellectual exhaustion and scepticism of all values that followed the first world war to abolish values and substitute for them an arbitrary mumbo-jumbo of occultism and pseudo-Freudianism, which they tagged on to the works of studioclowns like Picasso and Modigliani and the like."
Doc Bruce Banner, belted by gamma rays, Turns into the Hulk – Ain’t he unglamour-rays! [unglamorous] Wreckin’ the town with the power of a bull, Ain’t no monster,clown. Who is as lovable As ever-lovin’ Hulk? - Hulk! Hulk!
2013,Kim Stanley Robinson,The Gold Coast: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych; 2)[1], Tom Doherty Associates,→ISBN, page122:
Everything’s on the table, the specs are there in the RFP and can’t be changed by someclown in the Air Force who happens to come up with a new idea.
2017, Arron Crascall,See Ya Later: The World According to Arron Crascall:
'Breaking my sister's heart then getting pissed with his mates in the very next pub while she's sobbing alone?' I dragged thisclown away from the fruitie and back to Amy next door, running my mouth off at him as we went.
(obsolete) A man of coarse nature and manners; an awkward fellow; an illbred person; a boor.
This loutish clown is such that you never saw so ill - favoured a vizar
1700, Timothy Nourse,Campania Foelix, pages15–16:
[…] three things ought always to be kept under: a mastiff dog, a stone horse and aclown; and really I think a snarling, cross-grainedclown to be the most unlucky beast of three.
He[…] began to descend to familiar questions, endeavouring to accommodate his discourse to the grossness of rustic understandings. Theclowns soon found that he did not know wheat from rye, and began to despise him; one of the boys, by pretending to show him a bird's nest, decoyed him into a ditch;[…]
Except for Rasheena, the rest of the baby mamas was at least struggling to live halfway right. They used toclown and act shitty whenever they came by Noojie's and saw Carmiesha there. But every last one of them ended up being grateful to her for the things she did for their kids.
According toRoyal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.
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