Word.ws English Dictionary

farce

/fɑːs//fɑɹs/

farce noun: a style of humor marked by broad improbabilities with little regard to regularity or method. Also the alternative form of farse.

Noun

farce (countable and uncountable, plural farces)

  1. (uncountable) A style of humor marked by broad improbabilities with little regard to regularity or method.
  2. (countable) A motion picture or play featuring this style of humor.
    • The farce that we saw last night had us laughing and shaking our heads at the same time.
    • Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language[…]; his clerks […] understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there.1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC
  3. (uncountable) A situation abounding with ludicrous incidents.
    • The first month of labor negotiations was a farce.
    • The first match in the magnificent new national stadium was a Euro 2012 qualifier between Romania and France that soon descended into farce as the pitch cut up and players struggled to maintain their footing. Amorebieta at times seemed to be paying homage to that game, but nobody else seemed to...2012 May 9, Jonathan Wilson, “Europa League: Radamel Falcao's Atlético Madrid rout Athletic Bilbao”, in the Guardian
  4. (uncountable) A ridiculous or empty show.
    • The United States, he declared, was "a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed, circumcised Jew bastards."2019, Stephanie Butnick, Liel Leibovitz, Mark Oppenheimer, The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia - From Abraham to Zabar's and Everything in Between
  5. (countable) An elaborate lie.
  6. Forcemeat, stuffing.

Verb

farce (third-person singular simple present farces, present participle farcing, simple past and past participle farced)

  1. (transitive) To stuff with forcemeat or other food items.
    • The lunch […] consisted […] of […] lobster mayonnaise, cold game sausages, an immense veal and ham pie farced with eggs, truffles, and numberless delicious flavours; besides kickshaws, creams and sweetmeats.1923, Walter de la Mare, Seaton's Aunt
  2. (figuratively, transitive) To fill full; to stuff.
    • The first principles of religion should not be farced with school points and private tenets.1678, Robert Sanderson, Pax Ecclesiae
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To make fat.
    • [I]f thou would’ſt farce thy leane Ribs with it [pork] too, they would not (like ragged Lathes) rub out ſo many Dublets as they do: […]1599 (first performance), B. I. [i.e., Ben Jonson], The Comicall Satyre of Euery Man out of His Humor. […], London: […] [Adam Islip] for William Holme, […], published 1600, →OCLC, Act V, scene iii...
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To swell out; to render pompous.
    • farcing his letter with fustian1615, George Sandys, “(please specify the page)”, in The Relation of a Iourney Begun An: Dom: 1610. […], London: […] [Richard Field] for W. Barrett, →OCLC

Also used as

farce is also the alternative form of farse.

farce meaning in Malayalam and Tagalog

farce in Malayalam

style of humor
പ്രഹസനം prahasanaṁ

farce in Tagalog

style of humor
tiyaw

Examples of farce in a sentence

  • Words from the Martinverse start creeping into your normal conversations, like “smallclothes,” “jape,” and “mummer’s farce.”
  • It is also an attempt to mix "whoops!-there-go-my-trousers" farce with the slick kitsch pop-art comedy.
  • Not only was there still no sign of the promised economic recovery, but their presentational skills lapsed into farce.

All 27 example sentences with farce

Forms of farce

Noun
pluralfarces
Verb
third-person singular presentfarces
present participlefarcing
past participlefarced
pastfarced

Plural of farce: farces

Origin of farce

Borrowed from Middle French farce (“farce (style of humor); stuffing”) (in the latter sense, via Middle English fars, farsse), from Old French farse, from Medieval Latin farsa, from the feminine perfect passive participle of Latin farciō (“to stuff”). The theatre sense alludes to the pleasant and varied character of certain stuffed food items. Doublet of farse.

From Middle English farcen, from Old French farsir, farcir, from Latin farciō (“to cram, stuff”). Doublet of farse.

Words formed from farce

Words that rhyme with farce

Questions about farce

What does farce mean?
Farce means a style of humor marked by broad improbabilities with little regard to regularity or method.
What is farce in Malayalam?
Farce in Malayalam is പ്രഹസനം (prahasanaṁ). See Farce meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is farce?
Farce can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce farce?
Farce is pronounced /fɑːs/ (UK).
What is the plural of farce?
The plural of farce is farces.

Words near farce in the dictionary

  1. Farbrother
  2. farbs
  3. farby
  4. FARC
  5. Farcașa
  6. farce
  7. Farcebook
  8. farced
  9. farcelike
  10. farcemeat
  11. farcemeats

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: farce (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-Farce.ogg, en-us-farce.ogg.

Cite this entry: “farce.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/farce. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.