Word.ws English Dictionary

harlekin

harlekin is the obsolete form of harlequin.

Meaning of harlequin

Noun

harlequin (countable and uncountable, plural harlequins)

  1. A pantomime fool, typically dressed in colorful checkered clothes, used as a stock character in commedia dell'arte and other genres.
    • […] were certainly the worst and dullest company into which an audience was ever introduced; and (which was a secret known to few) were actually intended so to be, in order to contrast the comic part of the entertainment, and to display the tricks of harlequin to the better advantage.1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
  2. A greenish-chartreuse color.
  3. (informal) A harlequin duck.
  4. Any of various riodinid butterflies of the genera Taxila and Praetaxila.

See all 10 meanings of harlequin

Forms of harlekin

pluralharlekins

Questions about harlekin

What is harlekin the obsolete form of?
Harlekin is the obsolete form of harlequin.

Words near harlekin in the dictionary

  1. Harlech
  2. harled
  3. Harlee
  4. Harleian
  5. Harleigh
  6. harlekin
  7. harlekins
  8. Harlem
  9. Harlem Renaissance
  10. Harlem sunset
  11. Harlem sunsets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: harlekin (page history and authors); harlequin (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:

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