satires

Noun

satire (countable and uncountable, plural satires)

1. (uncountable) A literary device of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change or highlighting a shortcoming in the work of another. Imitation, humor, irony, and exaggeration are often used to aid this.
   • Satire deflates and debases. It is an art which topples greatness, undermines pretension and punishes pride by revealing the low in the pretendedly high, the filth in the pure, the folly in reason. This belittling trick deploys telescopic lenses which picture the human as lesser and lower, or as a...2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Ch.9, at p.148
2. (countable) A satirical work.
   • a stinging satire of American politics.
3. (dated, uncountable) Severity of remark.
   • CAESAR. No, by the gods! would that it had been! Vengeance at least is human. No, I say: those severed right hands, and the brave Vercingetorix basely strangled in a vault beneath the Capitol, were (with shuddering satire) a wise severity, a necessary protection to the commonwealth, a duty of...1898, George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra