VAUDEVILLE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Vaudeville

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/vˈɑdvɪl/ Listen

noun

Vaudeville n. (Written also vaudevil)

A kind of song of a lively character, frequently embodying a satire on some person or event, sung to a familiar air in couplets with a refrain; a street song; a topical song.

A theatrical piece, usually a comedy, the dialogue of which is intermingled with light or satirical songs, set to familiar airs. "The early vaudeville, which is the forerunner of the opera bouffe, was light, graceful, and piquant."

A variety show when performed live in a theater (see above); as, to play in vaudeville; a vaudeville actor.

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Etymology of 'Vaudeville'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Vaudeville" Quotes from Famous Books

... was an offense. School, college, at home, in each he went wrong. At twenty-one he left me and married a woman from the vaudeville stage. It is not of him you are to think, Emily, but of a substitute for him. For that I designed Dick; once I hoped you would marry ...

— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram

... that they played Stent and Brown—the three Mysterious Sisters, Fate, Chance, and Destiny. But they're always billed for any performance, be it vaudeville or tragedy; and there's no use hissing them off: they'll dog you from the stage entrance if they take a fancy ...

— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... dignitaries, all fled over the Rhine: nothing now to be gained at Court; but hopes, for which life itself must be risked! Obscure busy men frequent the back stairs; with hearsays, wind projects, un fruitful fanfaronades. Young Royalists, at the Theatre de Vaudeville, 'sing couplets;' if that could do any thing. Royalists enough, Captains on furlough, burnt-out Seigneurs, may likewise be met with, 'in the Cafe de Valois, and at Meot the Restaurateur's.' There they fan one another into high loyal glow; drink, in such wine as can be procured, ...

— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... rank him on a very different basis than if his main, and often his sole, object was to amuse the groundlings. If he often took himself and his art with hardly more seriousness than does the writer of the vaudeville skit or musical comedy of to-day, if he often wished primarily to gain the immediate laugh, then much of Langen's long list of the playwright's dramatic delinquencies is ...

— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... improbability. The Major sang a song—a song of the forties, with a touch of sentiment. Jack, whose cheerful voice was a little of the cider-cellar order, and who never sang when he was sad, struck up the latest vaudeville ditty, and Carmen and Miss Tavish joined in ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

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