A foolish or playfully ridiculous action or behavior; a silly prank or comedic performance.
Archaic spelling of 'antic,' from Italian 'antico' meaning 'ancient.' Renaissance artists found ancient Roman decorative grotesques so bizarrely funny that 'antic' came to mean any absurd or ridiculous act.
This old spelling shows how 'antic' traveled from art history to describe human silliness—those weird ancient Roman paintings were so strange and exaggerated that people used the word for any over-the-top foolishness.
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