Ealing comedy
Ealing comedy noun: a genre of English comedy film, typically populist and satirical about life in post-WWII British society.
Noun
Ealing comedy (countable and uncountable, plural Ealing comedies)
- A genre of English comedy film, typically populist and satirical about life in post-WWII British society.
- Ealing comedy is suddenly being regarded as the intellectual's treat.2004 June 3, James Chapman, Cinemas of the World: Film and Society from 1895 to the Present, Reaktion Books, →ISBN, page 281
- What Michael Balcon described as the 'mild anarchy' (1969: 159) permeating Ealing comedy was, over the course of the decade, usurped by the moderate anarchy of the St Trinians and Carry On films.2006 March 23, Gill Plain, John Mills and British Cinema: Masculinity, Identity and Nation, Edinburgh University Press, →ISBN, page 210
- A film in this genre.
- This new film follows the pattern of an Ealing comedy, with escalating chaos and fantasy as the entire fabric of life collapses for the inhabitants of a Leningrad apartment block1989 August 1, Julian Graffy, Geoffrey Hosking, Culture and the Media in the USSR Today, Springer, →ISBN, page 67
- OK, it's [The Ladykillers] an Ealing comedy so there's something very British and very genteel about it , which isn't particularly our thing.2006, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, The Coen Brothers: Interviews, Univ. Press of Mississippi, →ISBN, page 200
Examples of Ealing comedy in a sentence
- The use of voice-over, characteristic of Ealing comedy, is also ironic.2014 July 14, Marcia Landy, British Genres: Cinema and Society, 1930-1960, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 377:
- Ealing comedy was a reaction against the sort of earnest fare the Ealing Studios themselves had produced in wartime.2023 July 27, David Stubbs, Different Times: A History of British Comedy, Faber & Faber, →ISBN, page 1886:
Forms of Ealing comedy
| plural | Ealing comedies |
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Origin of Ealing comedy
From Ealing Studios, the studio which released most such films, named after the London town of Ealing.
Questions about Ealing comedy
- What does Ealing comedy mean?
- Ealing comedy means a genre of English comedy film, typically populist and satirical about life in post-WWII British society.
- How do you use Ealing comedy in a sentence?
- The use of voice-over, characteristic of Ealing comedy, is also ironic.
- What part of speech is Ealing comedy?
- Ealing comedy is a noun.
- What is the plural of Ealing comedy?
- The plural of Ealing comedy is Ealing comedies.
Words near Ealing comedy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Ealing comedy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “Ealing comedy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ealing_comedy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.