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buffa

American  
[boo-fuh, boof-fah] / ˈbu fə, ˈbuf fɑ /

noun

  • buffe
    plural
  1. a woman who sings comic roles in opera.

  2. opera buffa.


Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

Etymology

Origin of buffa

< Italian; feminine of buffo

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Felice Romani’s libretto also has an unusual—rather meta—construction: It includes a poet who is trying to write an opera buffa and narrates the events, a nod to Mozart’s “Così fan tutte.”

From The Wall Street Journal Jul. 20, 2026

A comic opera ends with a wedding, and our opera buffa is no exception.

From Los Angeles Times Feb. 17, 2023

It has more in common with Mozart’s opera buffa than with “Days of Our Lives.”

From Washington Post Jul. 16, 2015

Berlusconi turned it into opera buffa, was in office longer than any other Italian Prime Minister, and ended up in court.

From The New Yorker Jun. 22, 2015

It was not till some years later that recitative acquired sufficient flexibility to fit itself into the plan of the rapidly growing opera buffa.

From Some Forerunners of Italian Opera by W. J. (William James) Henderson

Nash’s Haue with you to Saffron-walden, 1596, “Yea, without kerry merry buffe be it spoken,” &c.

From Kemps Nine Daies Wonder Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich by Alexander Dyce

She clothed herselfe from the top to the toeIn buffe of the bravest, most seemelye to showe;A faire shirt of male then slipped on shee:Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree?

From A Collection of Ballads by Andrew Lang

One might style them true German opere buffe.'

From The Serapion Brethren, Vol. I. by Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann

Item, ten or twelue good shirts of male being very good or els none, that may abide the shot of an arrow, and two buffe ierkins.

From The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 03 by Richard Hakluyt

Beef would seem more like to have come from buffe than from boeuf, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling.

From The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell by James Russell Lowell

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