Meaning & use
tragicomedy
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Meanings
nouncountable
A play, film or story that mixes sad, serious events with funny ones.
Grammar: Plural is tragicomedies. Used for a kind of work: a tragicomedy about a family.
Patterns
- a tragicomedy about something
The film is a tragicomedy about a funeral that goes hilariously wrong.
Chekhov's plays are often described as tragicomedies.
She wrote a tragicomedy set in a struggling hotel.
nouncountablefigurative
A real event or situation that is both sad and absurdly funny.
Grammar: Used figuratively, often with a: the whole affair was a tragicomedy.
Patterns
- a tragicomedy of something
The election turned into a tragicomedy of missed deadlines and mistakes.
Moving house was a tragicomedy of broken boxes and lost keys.
Word forms
| plural | tragicomedies |
|---|
Common combinations
- a dark tragicomedy
- The festival opened with a dark tragicomedy about a failing circus.
- a modern tragicomedy
- The author's latest book is a modern tragicomedy of family secrets.
- a family tragicomedy
- It is a family tragicomedy with sharp dialogue.
- stage a tragicomedy
- The theater will stage a tragicomedy this spring.
- a tragicomedy of errors
- The trip became a tragicomedy of errors from the first day.
Synonyms and how they differ
- dark comedy
- A dark comedy finds humor in grim subjects but stays mainly a comedy, whereas a tragicomedy gives tragic and comic parts about equal weight.
- comedy-drama
- Comedy-drama, or dramedy, is a common label for TV and films that mix humor and serious feeling, without necessarily involving tragedy.
- black comedy
- Black comedy uses morbid or cruel humor to make you laugh at death or disaster.
- farce
- A farce is a silly comedy built on absurd mix-ups and lacks the sad turn that a tragicomedy has.
Word family
- tragicomic adjective
- both sad and funny
- tragedy noun
- a serious work or event that ends in disaster
- comedy noun
- a work or event intended to amuse
- tragicomically adverb
- in a sad and funny way
Commonly confused: tragicomedy or tragedy?
tragicomedy vs tragedy
A tragedy is serious and ends sadly with no real humor, but a tragicomedy deliberately mixes sad and funny events.
Practice
The play makes the audience laugh at a family's mistakes and then cry at their losses, so it is best described as a ____.
Choose one answer.
A tragicomedy mixes laughter and sorrow. A biography, documentary or lecture is not a play that mixes those moods.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “tragicomedy”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.