comedy of errors

English

Pronunciation

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Noun

comedy of errors (plural comedies of errors)

1. (idiomatic) A set of amusing or farcical events involving a series of awkward missteps or other mistakes.
   • 1884, Grant Allen, chapter 37, in Philistia:

     "[I]t's the poor Le Bretons who have brought us two thus together. And yet, they were both once our dearest rivals. You were in love with Edie Le Breton: I was half in love with Ernest Le Breton: and now—why, now, Arthur, I do believe we're both utterly in love with one another. What a curious little comedy of errors!"

   • 1914, Ralph Henry Barbour, chapter 13, in Left End Edwards:

     [T]hose who had remained so long began to view the game as what it really was, a comedy of errors, and got lots of fun out of it.

   • 1951 March, M. D. Greville, “The Nomenclature of Railway Stations”, in Railway Magazine, page 192:

     Reference to Flamborough brings to mind an amusing comedy of errors, which although not strictly a matter of station-naming, at least concerns station names. The actual name was Marton for Flamborough, and, by some error, it appeared in Bradshaw, at the end of 1858, as Marton from Flamborough. After two or three months, this was evidently noticed, and instructions given to correct it, but unfortunately the correction appeared as Marton or Flamborough, which remained undetected for several months more.

   • 1965 June 3, Eliot Fremont-Smith, "A Way Back to Life" (book review of August is a Wicked Month by Edna O'Brien), New York Times (retrieved 28 July 2013):

     What follows is a painful comedy of errors. Almost from her arrival she is pursued by a bellhop who interprets her every rebuff as a coy invitation.

   • 2005 Feb. 11, "Bride and Prejudice" (film review), boxofficeprophets.com (retrieved 28 July 2013):

     Though Lalita and Darcy's budding romance nearly falls prey to assumptions, back-biting gossip, and various coincidences and comedies of errors, pride and prejudice are both overcome so that love may conquer all in the end.

   • 2018 September 26, Drachinifel, 6:12 from the start, in The Battle of Lissa - Special‎^[1], archived from the original on 9 August 2023:

     Initially, despite this comedy of errors by the Italian command structure, the battle seemed to be going badly for the Austrians.

   • 2021 May 28, Sam Jones, Uki Goñi, “Bard timing: Argentinian TV reports death of Shakespeare after Covid jab”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop on Thursday night when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died five months after receiving the Covid vaccine.

References

• “comedy of errors”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.