caricature
/ˈkɛɹɪkət͡ʃʊɚ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.19 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A pictorial representation of someone in which distinguishing features are exaggerated for comic effect.
noun
noun
In facial recognition systems, a face that has been modified to look less like the average face, and thus more distinctive.
adj
Having the characteristics of a caricature, grotesque.
verb
To represent someone in an exaggerated or distorted manner.
Example Sentences
- "Lo Ching-chong (羅慶忠), better known as L.C.C., showed off a caricature of Lu he did in 2001. In the black-and-white drawing, Lu sports a bird's nest-like hairdo, with a bird perched in it."
- "Men In Black 3 lacks the novelty of the first film, and its take on the late ’60s feels an awful lot like a psychedelic dress-up party, all broad caricatures and groovy vibes."
- "A grotesque caricature of virtue."
- "Anything more appalling than this jumbled mass of the remains of a departed race I cannot imagine, and what made it even more dreadful was that in this dry air a considerable number of the bodies had simply become desiccated with the skin still on them, and now, fixed in every conceivable position, stared at us out of the mountain of white bones, grotesquely horrible caricatures of humanity."
- "They were ignoring that the feckless, toothless caricature of a world parliament — the UN — needed American money in order to keep going and would do anything to get our moolah!"
- "That singularly foolish old lady, her grandmother, got up a sort of caricature conspiracy, and Miss Churchill was to have been married to a coxcombical Jacobite, of the name of Trevanion; but he was arrested in the church, though he has since escaped by means of the jailor's daughter."
Etymology
Borrowed from French caricature, from Italian caricatùra, ultimately from Latin carrus, and so not related to character, which is instead ultimately from Ancient Greek χαρακτήρ (kharaktḗr, “type, nature, character”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *ḱers-, caricatura, carrus
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkɛɹɪkət͡ʃʊɚ/
- British English: /ˈkæɹɪkəˌtʃʊə/