The image of a happy clown is largely an American creation. So says Benjamin Radford, who wrote a book called Bad Clowns. In other cultures, he says, the clown character is not necessarily good.
Source: tatoeba (6331927)
Radford
Synonyms for "radford"
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Radford said that at first, clown shows were meant for adults, not children. In fact, clown characters were meant to be a critique of society or projections of the fears and concerns of everyday people.
Source: tatoeba (6331930)
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.