Caricature

Handout for

Language and Popular Culture

LING 057
Spring 1997

This definition comes from the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary; I have edited it for html format.

caricature
1. ('kaerIk&schwa.,tjU&schwa.(r)), sb. [a. Fr. caricature, ad. Ital. caricatura, which it has superseded in English. The stress was, and is often still, on u, esp. in the verb and derivatives caricaturing, etc.]
  - In Art. Grotesque or ludicrous representation of persons or thing by exaggeration of their most characteristic and striking features.
  - 1827 MACAULAY Machiav., Ess. (1851) I. 50 The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.
  - 1850 LEITCH tr. Muller's Anc. Art Sect.13. 4 A thorough destruction of beauty and regularity by exaggerated characterizing is caricature. 1865 WRIGHT (title), History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art.
2. transf. of literary description, etc.
  - 1871 FREEMAN Hist. Ess. Ser. I. i. 5 Stories..which..illustrate, if only by caricature, some real feature in his character.
3. A portrait or other artistic representation, in which the characteristic features of the original are exaggerated with ludicrous effect.
  - 1748 H. WALPOLE Let. G. Montagu 25 July, They look like caricatures done to expose them.
  - 1788 STORER in Ld. Auckland's Corr. (1861) II. 207 A pleasant caricature of Lady Archer is lately come out.
  - 1826 SYD. SMITH Wks. (1859) II. 88/1 You may draw caricatures of your intimate friends.
  - 1883 LLOYD Ebb & Flow II. 128 His marked features stood out so strongly that it made his face seem almost like a caricature of himself.
4. transf. of literary or ideal representation.
  - 1756 Connoisseur No. 114 Their ideal caricatures have perhaps often represented me lodged at least three stories from the ground.
  - 1841-44 EMERSON Ess. Nom. & Realism Wks. (Bohn) I. 254 If you criticise a fine genius, the odds are that you are..censuring your own caricature of him.
  - 1853 MARSDEN Early Purit. 245 An early Puritan comes down to us as a distorted ca ricature, known only as misrepresented in the next century by profligate wits and unscrupulous enemies.
5. An exaggerated or debased likeness, imitation, or copy, naturally or unintentionally ludicrous.
  - 1767 SIR T. MEREDITH in Burke's Corr. (1844) I. 129 You are a caricature of St. Thomas, not to believe, till you saw, what I could do in an election.
  - 1839 W. IRVING Wolfert's R. (1855) 166 Where they were served with a caricature of French cookery.
  - 1860 SMILES Self-Help ix. 251 The monkey, that caricature of our species.
  - attrib. 1845 DARWIN Voy. Nat. vii. (1879) 139 A caricature-likeness of the Common Swallow.
  - 1853 KANE Grinnell Exp. xl. 365 A rough caricature drawing by one of the men.
Match 2: caricature see prec., v. [f. the sb. Cf. Fr. caricaturer.] trans. To represent or portray in caricature; to make a grotesque likeness of.
- 1762-71 H. WALPOLE Vertue's Anecd. Paint. IV. iv. (R.) In revenge for this epistle, Hogarth caricatured Churchill under the form of a canonical bear.
- 1760 LYTTELTON Dial. Dead iv, He could draw an ill face, or caricature a good one, with a masterly hand.
- 1851 RUSKIN Stones Ven. (1874) I. App. 398 The appointed fate of the Renaissance architects, to caricature whatever they imitated.
b transf. and fig. To burlesque.
- 1749 SMOLLETT Gil Bl. 431 It would be caricaturing the peerage to confer it on me.
- 1862 GOULBURN Pers. Relig. IV. vii. (1873) 307 The Faith once given to the saints is grievously caricatured.
- Hence (from sb. and vb.) carica'turable a.; caricatured ppl. a.; caricaturely adv.; caricaturer (= CARICATURIST); caricaturing vbl. sb.; caricaturish a. (For pronunc. see the sb.)
  - 1886 Sat. Rev. 31 July 170 A grotesque and caricaturable ugliness.
  - 1813 Examiner 5 Apr. 223/1 Those caricatured rogues which give eclat to celebrated plays.
  - 1865 Public Opin. 28 Jan. 104 It is the caricatured crinolines that have brought their originals into disfavour. 1759 MACKLIN Love a la Mode I. i.
  - (1793) 10 His manner..has something so caricaturely risible in it. 1758 Monthly Rev. 319 The most eminent Caracaturers of these times.
  - 1758 Monthly Rev. 319 All the humourous effects of the fashionable manner of Caracaturing.
  - 1859 DICKENS T. Two Cities II. xiv, With beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite caricaturing of woe.
  - 1819 Blackw. Mag. V 401 Either that..they are rude or weak, caricaturish or insufficient.

haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu, last modified March 18, 1997.