Art & MusicGreek → English
Tragicomedy
/ˌtrædʒɪˈkɒmɪdi/noun
A play or story that mixes tragic and comic elements, typically ending happily after serious danger.
The Greek roots
τράγος
trágos
goat
κῶμος
kômos
revel, festive band
ᾠδή
ōidḗ
song
Literally: “goat-song revel-song”
The story of the word
Plautus made the joke first. In the prologue to the Amphitryo, Mercury announces that a play with gods and slaves on the same stage cannot be a straight tragedy, so he will make it a tragicocomoedia. Renaissance critics picked the word up as a real category and English borrowed it in the sixteenth century. Why tragedy should mean goat-song is still argued: a goat as the prize, a goat as the sacrifice, or singers dressed as satyrs.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
tragedycomedyodeparodymelody
In a sentence
The film is a tragicomedy: nobody dies, but nobody quite recovers either.