vaudeville

English

Etymology

Corruption of bawdy village (after the supposedly scandalous nature of chorus lines in 19th century Paris), where the alliterative effect thus realized was supposed to be humorous or comical.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA: /ˈvɔdvɪl/

Noun

Wikipedia vaudeville (countable and uncountable; plural vaudevilles)

1. (historical, uncountable) A style of multi-act theatrical entertainment which flourished in North America from the 1880s through the 1920s.
2. (historical, countable) An entertainment in this style.
   • 2008 January 28, Ben Brantley, “Ta-ta! Give ’Em the Old Existential Soft-Shoe”, New York Times:

     “Me, Myself and I,” directed by Emily Mann and engagingly acted by a cast that includes the invaluable Albee veteran Brian Murray, is in the tradition of Mr. Albee’s mid- and late-career works like “The Marriage Play” and “The Play About the Baby”: fragmented philosophical vaudevilles that turn the most fundamental questions of identity into verbal soft-shoes.

Synonyms

• music hall (British)

Derived terms

• vaudevillian (noun)

Translations

a style of multi-act theatrical entertainment

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 雜耍 (cmn), 杂耍 (cmn) (záshuǎ)

• Finnish: vaudeville (fi)
• French: vaudeville (fr) m
• German: Vaudeville (de) n

• Icelandic: gamansýning (is) f, fjölleikasýning (is) f
• Japanese: ヴォードヴィル (ja) (vōdoviru), ボードビル (ja) (bōdobiru)
• Korean: 보더빌 (ko) (bodeobil)
• Russian: водевиль (ru) (vodevíl') m, варьете (ru) (var'jeté) n (indeclinable)