[a. F. caricature, ad. It. caricatura, which it has superseded in English. The stress was, and is often still, on u, esp. in the verb and derivatives caricaturing, etc.]
1. In Art. Grotesque or ludicrous representation of persons or things by exaggeration of their most characteristic and striking features.
1827. Macaulay, Machiav., Ess. (1851), I. 50. The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.
1850. Leitch, trans. C. O. Müller’s Anc. Art, § 13. 4. A thorough destruction of beauty and regularity by exaggerated characterizing is caricature.
1865. Wright (title), History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art.
b. transf. of literary description, etc.
1871. Freeman, Hist. Ess., Ser. I. i. 5. Stories … which … illustrate, if only by caricature, some real feature in his character.
2. A portrait or other artistic representation, in which the characteristic features of the original are exaggerated with ludicrous effect.
1748. H. Walpole, Let. G. Montagu, 25 July. They look like caricatures done to expose them.
1788. Storer, in Ld. Auckland’s Corr. (1861), II. 207. A pleasant caricature of Lady Archer is lately come out.
1826. Syd. Smith, Wks. (1859), II. 88/1. You may draw caricatures of your intimate friends.
1883. G. Lloyd, Ebb & Flow, II. 128. His marked features stood out so strongly that it made his face seem almost like a caricature of himself.
b. transf. of literary or ideal representation.
1756. Connoisseur, No. 114. Their ideal caricatures have perhaps often represented me lodged at least three stories from the ground.
1841–4. Emerson, Ess. Nom. & Realism, Wks. (Bohn), I. 254. If you criticise a fine genius, the odds are that you are … censuring your own caricature of him.
1853. Marsden, Early Purit., 245. An early puritan comes down to us a distorted caricature, known only as misrepresented in the next century by profligate wits and unscrupulous enemies.
3. An exaggerated or debased likeness, imitation, or copy, naturally or unintentionally ludicrous.
1767. Sir T. Meredith, in Burke’s Corr. (1844), I. 129. You are a caricature of St. Thomas, not to believe, till you saw, what I could do in an election.
1839. W. Irving, Wolfert’s R. (1855), 166. Where they were served with a caricature of French cookery.
1860. Smiles, Self-Help, ix. 251. The monkey, that caricature of our species.
4. attrib.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., vii. (1876), 139. A caricature-likeness of the common swallow.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xl. (1854), 365. A rough caricature drawing by one of the men.
