A television comedy show where the same characters appear in different funny situations each episode, usually lasting about 30 minutes.
A portmanteau of 'situation' and 'comedy,' coined in the 1950s when television was creating a new format. The word emerged as TV producers developed serialized comedy shows different from radio comedy or theatrical sketches.
'Sitcom' is a word that was literally invented for TV—nobody used it before the 1950s! It's one of the few words created by a technology rather than by natural language evolution, like how 'selfie' was created for smartphones.
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