LAMPOON • DICTIONARY ONE.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

... 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 ...

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

... poaching was a reasonable pastime enough. He dared "do all that may become a man," and the penalty of exciting the wrath of a great landowner and game preserver was no less then than now. Sir Thomas was angry; the poet is said to have written a vulgar, bitter lampoon, still preserved, and affixed a copy to the gates of Charlecote. The response was a persecution that made Stratford too hot to hold a greater man than all the big sportsmen from Nimrod's day to ours, and William Shakespeare left wife and children and vanished from the old town's ken. Some think ...

— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan

... where naturally I read only of myself, I gather a general impression of offensive aggressiveness, that, coupled with Chase's monstrous lampoon, has prepared me for ...

— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... positively declared, he would never submit to any such condition whilst he executed the office, and affected to treat Mr. Webster himself, his education, abilities, and family, with the utmost contempt. He was indiscreet enough, prior to this, to write a lampoon, in which the lord lieutenant was not spared: he would publish it (so fond was he of this brat of his brain) in opposition to Mr. Addison's opinion, who strongly persuaded him to suppress it; as the publication, ...

— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... than thirty years' standing, would be to suppose him indulging his "Pleasures of Memory" with a vengeance. You never penned a line which for its own sake you need (dying) wish to blot. You mistake your heart if you think you can write a lampoon. Your whips are rods of roses. Your spleen has ever had for its objects vices, not the vicious-abstract offences, not the concrete sinner. But you are sensitive, and wince as much at the consciousness of having ...

— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

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