Buffoon

December 2nd, 2011 by admin

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Posted in Odds and Ends | 9 comments

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9 comments on this post.

  1. john plush:

    August 17th, 2013 at 7:33 am

    ‘Refudiate’ is not a word! You mean repudiate.

  2. admin:

    August 18th, 2013 at 6:19 pm

    It was a joke, based on Sarah Palin having said the “word” (apparently a blend of “refute” and “repudiate”) around the time the column was written.

  3. Chris:

    March 5th, 2014 at 7:24 pm

    Simply brilliant! I was curious about the word and arrived here. Glad I did.
    Thank you.

  4. mahadevan:

    August 20th, 2015 at 1:00 am

    I want to know the source language of the word ‘buffoon’ before it entered Italian language.

    I am from India and doing research on the link of foreign languages with our language Tamil or Hindi.

    mahadeevan s

  5. Raul daSilva:

    July 16th, 2016 at 5:49 pm

    A trip back to my home town (one that I escaped 21
    years ago) and the background to “buffoon”. Curiously,
    Trump was the reason I decided to visit here, and now I owe him a debt of gratitude. Yes, the word fits him like a fine glove. Today, the modern version begins with the letter “A”

  6. steve siporin:

    March 22nd, 2018 at 3:30 pm

    Is there any possibility that “buffoon” is also related to Italian “befana”? The befana is an old woman, a witch, who brings children gifts on Epiphany Eve. (Befana is understood to derive from Epifania, Epiphany.) Besides the similar sound, “she” is a buffoonish figure in the folk celebration of Epiphany in which “she” is a cross-dressed male often wearing women’s underclothes, at least a slip, over his women’s clothes. She is accompanying in the house to house visiting by “befanoti” who also wear outlandish costumes. What do you think?

  7. Gillian Mundy:

    July 12th, 2019 at 3:52 am

    I was thinking of the word to describe Boris Johnson.

  8. Jim Brock:

    May 14th, 2020 at 11:22 am

    I recall a passage in an old book “In Search of Adam”, that Count Buffon put on a comic approach to avoid being sent to the guillotine for his views on plant science. Pro evolution. The leaders of the mob during the French Revolution were not in favor of his views. So he became a jokester in the Paris Salons of the time. So his name was modified into buffoon to describe a jokester.

  9. Paul S:

    August 14th, 2020 at 8:28 pm

    excellent….
    but, i.m.h.o. …. buffoon is way too gentle a word for deplorable leaders of democracies… they are more aptly….. self-deluded, self-important sociopaths….. very sadly… nothing amusing, really :'( …. but “the people chose them”…. :o ….?!

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