auguste means A kind of clown, usually serving as an anarchic foil to the whiteface. It carries an Arena rating of 1384, earned across 56 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, auguste ranks #750 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #1,015 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words, #2,940 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #3,154 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
auguste is pronounced /aʊˈɡuːst/.
Why “auguste” is a great word
AUGUSTE — [Noun] A circus clown defined by garish, misfitting attire and anarchic physical comedy, serving as the hapless foil to the elegant whiteface. The term descends from the French auguste, from the German (dumme) August, literally meaning "(stupid) August," a traditional clown character name. Unlike the "whiteface," the poised trickster who engineers the pranks, or the "jester," the courtly wit who traffics in verbal barbs, the auguste is pure embodied calamity. He is the splash from a carefully aimed bucket that soaks only the thrower, the pratfall taken with magnificent commitment on a perfectly dry floor, the trousers that descend at the moment of intended grandeur—a testament to the profound dignity of dedicated foolishness.
Etymology
From French auguste, from German (dumme) August.
noun
- A kind of clown, usually serving as an anarchic foil to the whiteface.e.g.“It had been used for clownish mock-disappearences, one auguste looking for another through endlessly circling blackness, an apparatus not now much in use.” — 1971, Anthony Burgess, M/F, Penguin, published 2004, page 93:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.