The AI-powered English dictionary
plural harlequins
A pantomime fool, typically dressed in colorful checkered clothes. quotations examples
[…] were certainly the worst and dullest company into which an audience was ever introduced; and (which was a secret known to few) were actually intended so to be, in order to contrast the comic part of the entertainment, and to display the tricks of harlequin to the better advantage.
1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Motives are like harlequins—there is always a second dress beneath their first.
1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XX, in Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], page 241
A greenish-chartreuse color. examples
(informal) A harlequin duck. examples
(entomology) Any of various riodinid butterflies of the genera Taxila and Praetaxila.
not comparable
Brightly colored, especially in a pattern like that of a harlequin clown's clothes. examples
Of a greenish-chartreuse color. examples
third-person singular simple present harlequins, present participle harlequining, simple past and past participle harlequined
(transitive) To remove or conjure away, as if by a harlequin's trick. quotations examples
And kitten, if the humour hit / Has harlequin'd away the fit.
1737, Matthew Green, The Spleen
(intransitive) To make sport by playing ludicrous tricks. examples