auguste
Pluralaugustes
- 1A type of circus clown who acts as a chaotic, bumbling foil to the elegant, authoritative whiteface clown.
Like the bumbling sidekick in a comedy duo who undercuts the straight man at every turn.
The auguste stumbled into the ring, knocking over props while the whiteface looked on in despair.
Every time the whiteface barked an order, the auguste did the exact opposite, to roars of laughter.
Oppositewhiteface
Note
A circus name that came through French from the German dumme August, "stupid August": the clown is, quite literally, a fool called August. The final -e keeps it apart on the page from the stately English adjective august, whose dignity belongs to the whiteface instead. It is an ordinary countable noun, plural augustes, as in Anthony Burgess's M/F (1971): "one auguste looking for another."
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Origin
From French "auguste", which came from German "(dumme) August".