Meaning

A pantomime fool, typically dressed in colorful checkered clothes, used as a stock character in commedia dell'arte and other genres..

Definitions by Sense

1. A pantomime fool, typically dressed in colorful checkered clothes, used as a stock character in commedia dell'arte and other genres.
2. A greenish-chartreuse color.
3. (informal) A harlequin duck.
4. (entomology) Any of various riodinid butterflies of the genera Taxila and Praetaxila.
5. Brightly colored, especially in a pattern like that of a harlequin clown's clothes.
6. Of a greenish-chartreuse color.
7. (transitive) To remove or conjure away, as if by a harlequin's trick.
8. (intransitive) To make sport by playing ludicrous tricks.

Example Sentences

[…] were certainly the worst and dullest company into which an audience was ever introduced; and (which was a secret known to few) were actually intended so to be, in order to contrast the comic part of the entertainment, and to display the tricks of harlequin to the better advantage.

Motives are like harlequins—there is always a second dress beneath their first.

And kitten, if the humour hit / Has harlequin'd away the fit.

Word Forms

• harlequins
• harlequining
• harlequined

Related Words

When Should You Use Harlequin?

Use harlequin when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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