Pronounced: dee-fur-VESS-uhns, noun
Notes: Not at all what I thought
Yesterday’s word
The word farceur means
- joker; wag
- a writer or actor of farce
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1700s
Background / Comments
Like me, you probably thought that our word had something to do with “farce” (and we were right), but I was unaware of the first meaning. In fact, the first meaning was the original meaning – our word came to us from Modern French, and to Modern French from the Middle French word farcer (to joke). The word farce originally meant “forcemeat”; that is, seasoned meat used for a stuffing. Both “farce” and our word ultimately go back to the Latin word farcire (to stuff); one can think that a farce is silly humor “stuffed” with a contrived plot.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 