Other forms: clowns, clowning
A clown is the performer with the white face, the red nose, the enormous shoes and the trousers that fall down. Children shriek, the clown pretends to be hurt, and the bucket that should hold water turns out to hold paper streamers.
Outside the circus, calling somebody a clown means they play the fool — fondly, about the joker in a family, and not fondly at all in 'some clown has parked across the drive'. It works as a verb in one phrase: clown around, or clown about in Britain. Stop clowning around and get in the car. Clownish is the adjective, and it always means silly rather than funny. The sad clown is a stock figure — the painted smile with real misery behind it — and a clown car is the tiny car that impossibly many of them climb out of.
1nounclownA circus or party performer with a painted face and silly clothes, who makes people laugh by falling over and playing tricks.~86%
“A clown came out with a bucket and the front row screamed.”
2nounbehavesSomebody who behaves in a silly way to make other people laugh.~2%
“He was the class clown for five years running.”
3nounstupidA stupid or careless person.~10%
“Some clown left the gate open and the sheep are on the road.”
4verbplayfulTo behave in a silly, playful way.~2%
“They clowned about at the back of the bus the whole way home.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
clown is a performer.
Before the circus, a clown was a lump. The earlier forms clowne and cloyne meant a man of rustic or coarse manners, a boor, and the trail looks Scandinavian: Icelandic klunni and Swedish kluns both mean a clumsy fellow, from Middle Low German klunz, from klunt, a pile, a lump, something thick. The oaf came first, and the red nose was added long afterwards.
Proto-Indo-European
*gel- — to ball up; amass
Middle Low German
klunz
English, today
clown
Built from
From earlier clowne, cloyne (“man of rustic or coarse manners, boor, peasant”); likely of gmq origin, akin to Icelandic klunni (“clumsy fellow, klutz”), Swedish kluns (“clumsy fellow”), all from Middle Low German klunz, from klunt (“pile, lump, something thick”); according to Pokorny, this could be related to a group of Germanic derivatives of Proto-Indo-European gel- (“to ball up; amass”), such as Proto-West Germanic klott (“lump”), Proto-Germanic klūtaz (“clod, lump”), kultaz (“lump, bundle”), etc. Alternatively, directly from Low German - (compare frr klönne (“clumsy fellow, klutz”), Dutch kluns (“clumsy fellow, klutz”), Dutch kloen (“uncouth person, lout”)), themselves from the same ultimate source as above. Unlikely from colōnus, although learned awareness of this term may have influenced semantic development.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA