LAMPOON • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Lampoon

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/læmpˈun/ Listen

noun

Lampoon n.

A personal satire in writing; usually, malicious and abusive censure written only to reproach and distress. "Like her who missed her name in a lampoon, And grieved to find herself decayed so soon."

Hence: Any satire ridiculing or mocking a person, activity, or institution by representing its character or behavior in an exaggerated or grotesque form; the representation may be written, filmed, or performed as a live skit, and may be intended as a severe reproach, or as good-natured humor.

verb

Lampoon v. t. (past & past part. lampooned; pres. part. lampooning) To subject to abusive ridicule expressed in a work of art; to make (a person, behavior, or institution) the subject of a lampoon. "Ribald poets had lampooned him."

Synonyms: To libel; defame; satirize; lash.

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Etymology of 'Lampoon'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Lampoon" Quotes from Famous Books

... Chancellor's value to him—that crew of rakes went laboriously and insidiously to work upon the public mind, which is to say the public ignorance—most fruitful soil for scandal against the great. Who shall say how far my lady and the Court were responsible for the lampoon affixed one day to my Lord ...

— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... our enthusiasm; in sneering at the extravagances of fancy or passion, instead of giving a loose to them; in describing a row of pins and needles, rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans; in penning a lampoon or a compliment, and in ...

— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... you visit Flavia on the Sunday, you will always meet good company, you will know what is doing in the world, you will hear the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and who is meant by every name that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted that week, which is the finest song in the opera, who was intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in fashion. Flavia thinks they are atheists who play at cards on the Sunday, ...

— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... too disreputable to be allowed to live in Norway. The old Chronicler gives a very quaint description of him. "Thangbrand," he says, "was a passionate, ungovernable person, and a great man-slayer; but a good scholar, and clever. Thorvald, and Veterlid the Scald, composed a lampoon against him; but he killed them both outright. Thangbrand was two years in Iceland, and was the death of three men before ...

— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... Second. There was a strong popular delusion carried on by the wits and the Misses who formed the court of Charles the Second, that the government was as much shared by the Hydes as the Stuarts. We have in the state-poems, an unsparing lampoon, entitled "Clarendon's House-warming;" but a satire yielding nothing to it in severity I have discovered in manuscript; and it is also remarkable for turning chiefly on a pun of the family name of the Earl of Clarendon. The witty and ...

— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

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