harlequin

plural harlequins

1. countableuncountableA pantomime fool, typically dressed in colorful checkered clothes, used as a stock character in commedia dell'arte and other genres.

   Motives are like harlequins—there is always a second dress beneath their first.

   1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XX, in Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 241

   1 more example

   […] were certainly the worst and dullest company into which an audience was ever introduced; and (which was a secret known to few) were actually intended so to be, in order to contrast the comic part of the entertainment, and to display the tricks of harlequin to the better advantage.

   1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

2. countableuncountableA greenish-chartreuse color.
3. countableinformaluncountableA harlequin duck.
4. countableuncountablebiologyAny of various riodinid butterflies of the genera Taxila and Praetaxila.

1. not comparableBrightly colored, especially in a pattern like that of a harlequin clown's clothes.
2. not comparableOf a greenish-chartreuse color.

present singular third person harlequins · participle present harlequining · participle past harlequined · past harlequined

1. transitiveTo remove or conjure away, as if by a harlequin's trick.

   And kitten, if the humour hit / Has harlequin'd away the fit.

   1737, Matthew Green, The Spleen

2. intransitiveTo make sport by playing ludicrous tricks.

1. entertainmentThe best-known of the zanni or comic servant characters from the Italian commedia dell'arte, associated with the city of Bergamo.
2. A type of eyeglass frame design inspired by Venetian Harlequin masks, more commonly known as cat-eye.