farce

Latin farcire meant 'to stuff, to cram.' French inherited it as farcir, and the noun farce meant 'stuffing' — both the culinary preparation (forcemeat, a mixture of ground meat and fat) and the act of packing something full. The word was domestic and physical. It belonged in kitchens.

In medieval French theater, short comic interludes were inserted — stuffed — between the acts of religious mystery plays and morality plays. These comic bits were called farces because they were crammed into gaps in the serious drama. The audience came for the miracle play. They stayed for the stuffing. By the fourteenth century, the farces had become more popular than the plays they interrupted.

The Farce of Master Pathelin (c. 1460), a play about a lawyer who cheats a draper and then gets cheated by his own client, is the masterpiece of medieval French farce. It ran for decades and was translated across Europe. The form it established — fast pace, physical comedy, improbable situations, and characters who outsmart themselves — became the template for comic theater for the next five centuries.

English borrowed farce in the 1530s for the theatrical form and has used it metaphorically ever since. A farcical trial, a farcical election, a farcical meeting — the word describes any situation where the gap between seriousness and absurdity has collapsed. The stuffing has burst from the sausage. The comedy has consumed the structure it was meant to fill.