combining form of L. cōmicus, Gr. κωμικ-ός, as in comico-cynical, -didactic, -prosaic, -tragedy, -tragic, -tragical (cf. tragi-comedy, tragi-comic). Also in humorous nonce-wds., as comico-cratic (after aristocratic); comicoepy (after orthoepy), comic speaking; comicography (see -GRAPHY), comic writing.
1598. Hakluyt, Voy., I. 8. As some princes in other countries haue made their liues Comico-tragical.
1820. Edin. Rev., XXXIV. 290. In what he calls a comico-prosaic style.
1831. Crayons fr. Commons, 83.
| The risibles are constantly distended, | |
| Till all his comicoepy’s expended. |
1831. Southey, in Q. Rev., XLV. 427. The idiosyncratic, democratic, cosmocratic, comicocratic Jeremy that he [Bentham] is. Ibid. (1833), Lett. (1856), IV. 336. The first scene was the most tragi-comic or comico-tragic that it was ever my fortune to be engaged in. Ibid. (1835), in C. C. Southey, Life & Corr., VI. 270. Cryptography, or what might more properly be called in Dovean language, comicography.
1847. De Quincey, Wks. (1862), VII. 51. Wieland had a touch of the comico-cynical in his nature.
1851. Carlyle, Sterling, III. iv. 204. In the mock-heroic or comico-didactic vein.
1880. Cornh. Mag., XLII. 659. A comico-tragedy was enacted at Mrs. Ellis’s concerning this very plate.
