Punch-and-Judy show
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of Punch-and-Judy show
First recorded in 1875–80
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.
But isn’t there also a side effect, an off-label one if you will, of making the audience giggle along at this postmodern Punch-and-Judy show?
From Slate ● Jan. 6, 2016
Pussycat is as old as the Punch-and-Judy show and as new as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and the evening is filled with good, healthy, vulgar, neurotic laughter.
From Time Magazine Archive
But the haughty, who scorn the moving pictures, cannot rid themselves of the feeling that they are being seduced into going into some sort of a Punch-and-Judy show.
From The Art of the Moving Picture by Vachel Lindsay
Yet they are a deal funnier—they are as funny as a box of monkeys, as entertaining as a Punch-and-Judy show, as interesting as a "fifteen puzzle," and sometimes as pretty as chromos.
From Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 01 Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great by Elbert Hubbard
The road was thick with people and lined with sweet-standings; and by the near end of the bridge a Punch-and-Judy show had just closed a performance.
From The Delectable Duchy by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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.
