Keystone Kop
Americannoun
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Usually Keystone Kops. (in early silent movies) a team of comic policemen noted for their slapstick routines.
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Also Keystone Cop a person noted for bungling inefficiency.
a backfield of Keystone Kops.
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.
Family friends urged Slim to get into movies “because he was such a character,” Clark said, “so in the early ’20s, he hitchhiked to Hollywood” and became a Keystone Kop and then a character actor.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 8, 2023
This time, though, I loved the novel as a frenetic, over-the-top farce, packed with Keystone Kop action.
From Washington Post • Apr. 13, 2022
I identified the Keystone Kop on Main Street, U.S.A., as an official undercover policeman.
From Los Angeles Times • May 31, 2019
Chester Conklin, 85, silent-screen zany known to a generation of filmgoers as the Keystone Kop with the walrus mustache; of emphysema; in Hollywood.
From Time Magazine Archive
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St. Cyr at the moment looked like a Keystone Kop after the chase sequence, and knew it.
From The Ego Machine by Kuttner, Henry
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.