Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A satire or lampoon, especially one that ridicules a specific person, traditionally written and posted in a public place.
  • transitive verb To ridicule with a pasquinade; satirize or lampoon.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as pasquin.
  • To satirize; lampoon; libel in pasquinades. Also pasquil.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A lampoon or satirical writing.
  • transitive verb To lampoon, to satirize.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A lampoon, originally as published in public; a satire or libel on someone.
  • verb transitive To satirize (someone) by using a pasquinade.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a composition that imitates or misrepresents somebody's style, usually in a humorous way

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Italian pasquinata, after Pasquino, nickname given to a statue in Rome, Italy, on which lampoons were posted.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French pasquinade, from Pasquin + -ade, modelled on Italian pasquinata.

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Examples

  • I mean, assuming the "New Yorker Cartoon Law of Biting Satire", which states that the jocularity of a particular pasquinade is directly proportional to the abstruseness of the language in which you couch it, it was hilarious.

    JERRY BRUCKHEIMER’S LAWS OF SCIENCE 2008

  • 'pasquinade' as shall take you into these Holy of Holy purlieus of mischief and money-making, you will deserve to be chief of the

    Temporal Power Marie Corelli 1889

  • Lucy, his treatment must have been galling and humiliating; for it so wrought upon his spirit as to produce a rough pasquinade, which was affixed to the park gate at Charlecot. 43 43

    The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon 2002

  • This famous act of vandalism by Urban VIII inspired the famous pasquinade: Quod non fecerunt barbari fecerunt Barberini.

    It Was the Roof Ridley, Ronald T. 1996

  • Voznesensky treats sensitive issues without flinching, but he does so through poetry, not pasquinade.

    On Voznesensky Starr, S. Frederick 1979

  • Major Caskie -- who ever went into battle with a smile on his lips -- found time, between fights, for broad pasquinade on folly about him, with pen and pencil.

    Four Years in Rebel Capitals An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death T. C. DeLeon

  • A mountaineer therefore in Avaria or Koomookha who considered himself aggrieved by a decision of his khan, and who dared not complain openly, could relieve his outraged feelings only by inventing and setting afloat an anonymous pasquinade.

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. Various

  • Harvard College, writing a pasquinade to post upon the Ipswich meeting-house, and Nashaway was "suffered to live without the meanes," waiting for him until 1654.

    The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 5, February, 1885 Various

  • Luther at first took it seriously for a forgery -- a mere pasquinade -- until he was assured by the Elector of the genuineness of this and another and similar letter, and thus provoked to take public steps against it.

    Life of Luther Julius Koestlin

  • On account of his death, {132} which took place just before the time of the carnival in 1829, the usual festivities were omitted, which gave occasion to the following pasquinade, which was much, though privately, circulated --

    Notes and Queries, Number 39, July 27, 1850 Various

Comments

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  • Noted in the etymology to be coined after the name of a Roman statue, Pasquino, which was regularly covered with scurrilous satires while standing in a public place.

    February 7, 2008

  • "When Michaelis's testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson's suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would be shortly served up in racy pasquinade - but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn't say a word."

    - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925

    August 9, 2009

  • "Set in an elementary school in Argentina in the early seventies, it is in fact a pasquinade on the bourgeois pretentions and puerile rivalries among Buenos Aires writers and intellectuals at that time."

    Darren Koolman, in his Translator's Preface to The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, p V of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback

    September 10, 2013