one-acter

Also one-act

[wuhn-ak-ter]

noun

Informal.

1. a short play consisting of one act.

Word History and Origins

Origin of one-acter¹

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

How could I not include the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s vicious little four-character one-acter?

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In the second act — originally the 1990 one-acter “Falsettoland” — the witty musical takes a gut-wrenching turn toward life at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

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Like that one-acter, Mr. Carter’s play asks its characters to look deep into their souls and admit their bad faith.

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It was adapted from Thornton Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker,” which grew out of his “The Merchant of Yonkers,” itself adapted from an 1842 Austrian reworking of an 1835 American one-acter.

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I urged that our first offering should be a bill of three one-act plays, including Paul Green’s Hymn to the Rising Sun, a grim, poetical, powerful one-acter dealing with chain gang conditions in the South.

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