buffa
AmericanOther 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
This obscure and hilariously outrageous takeoff on the genre of Italian opera buffa, written in 1846, turned out to be the hit of the weekend.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2024
“Bowlaway” is a large and caterwauling sort of opera buffa, packed with outsize characters — some with recherché talents — and wild, often dreamlike events.
From New York Times ● Feb. 4, 2019
It has more in common with Mozart’s opera buffa than with “Days of Our Lives.”
From Washington Post ● Jul. 16, 2015
The other men who devoted themselves to opera buffa during this period my be briefly dismissed.
From The Opera A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions of all Works in the Modern Repertory. by Fuller-Maitland, J. A.
One might style them true German opere buffe.'
From The Serapion Brethren, Vol. I. by Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm
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 Lang, Andrew
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 Lowell, James Russell
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 Dyce, Alexander
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 Hakluyt, Richard
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
