Comedy is a genre of fiction consisting of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term originated in Ancient Greece: in Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing agon [(古希腊的运动,文学等的)锦标赛] or conflict.

Satire and political satire use comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of their humor. Parody [滑稽模仿作品] subverts [颠覆 =undermine] popular genres and forms, critiquing [批评] those forms without necessarily condemning them.

Other forms of comedy include screwball [sbmeone who seems very strange or crazy] comedy, which derives its humor largely from bizarre, surprising (and improbable) situations or characters, and black comedy, which is characterized by a form of humor that includes darker aspects of human behavior or human nature. Similarly scatological [too interested in or related to human waste [faeces]] humor, sexual humor, and race humor create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comic ways. A comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society (usually upper-class society) and uses humor to parody or satirize the behavior and mannerisms of its members. Romantic comedy is a popular genre that depicts burgeoning [grow or develop quickly] romance in humorous terms and focuses on the foibles [peculiarity] of those who are falling in love.

The word "comedy" is derived from the Classical Greek κωμῳδία kōmōidía, which is a compound of κῶμος kômos (revel 狂欢) and ᾠδή ōidḗ (singing; ode 颂诗). The adjective "comic" (Greek κωμικός kōmikós), which strictly means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage, generally confined to the sense of "laughter-provoking". Of this, the word came into modern usage through the Latin comoedia and Italian commedia and has, over time, passed through various shades of meaning.

The Greeks and Romans confined their use of the word "comedy" to descriptions of stage-plays with happy endings. Aristotle [亚里士多德] defined comedy as an imitation of men worse than the average (where tragedy was an imitation of men better than the average). However, the characters portrayed in comedies were not worse than average in every way, only insofar as [to the degree that] they are Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others; the mask, for instance, that excites laughter is something ugly and distorted without causing pain. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings. It is in this sense that Dante used the term in the title of his poem, La Commedia. 正是在这个意义上，但丁在他的诗《喜剧》的标题中使用了这个词。（可见La是冠词）

As time progressed, the word came more and more to be associated with any sort of performance intended to cause laughter. During the Middle Ages, the term "comedy" became synonymous with satire, and later with humour in general.

六级/考研单词: comedy, fiction, discourse, amuse, induce, entertain, medium, democracy, satire, comic, poet, pit, gender, portray, ridicule, corrupt, thereby, humour, condemn, derive, bizarre, situate, likewise, violate, convention, taboo, depict, romance, classic, compound, adjective, strict, usage, confine, shade, imitate, tragedy, mask, excite, distort, synonym