adjective
1Intentionally ridiculous or bizarre; surreal.
‘a delightful piece of absurdist nonsense’- ‘Regrettably, the overall effect of the piece was tame—gently absurdist, charming, amusing.’
- ‘The secret to Green Acres' enduring appeal is its absurdist view of the world.’
- ‘The outlandish titles appear to contain apocalyptic messages, albeit relayed with absurdist humor.’
- ‘It's a delightful piece of absurdist nonsense, a sitcom designed to offend highbrow admirers of minimalist dance.’
- ‘Truly, it is absurdist comedy at its finest.’
- ‘But the overriding likeness is the fun, almost absurdist sense of humor.’
- ‘The director stays fairly conventional, reining things in when he could veer off into wonderfully absurdist territory.’
- ‘What follows is a welcome dose of absurdist humor just when we need it.’
- ‘It's a rapid-paced mélange of absurdist nonsense stuffed with mad ideas, baffling scenarios, and unlikely characters.’
- ‘This absurdist children's comedy starred the standup comic as a pizza delivery man.’
2Relating to or supporting the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe.
‘His films are often absurdist and violent, intrinsically drawing on his early life but never dealing directly with it.’- ‘Taking to an absurdist extreme the notion that the unique qualities of a medium should dictate its form, he produces three-dimensional objects composed solely of paint.’
- ‘It is an absurdist drama played out against an almost constructivist background of red, white and blue rectangles.’
- ‘In an absurdist prose poem he wrote at the time, renewal is associated with class-based oppression.’
- ‘It instead focuses upon the absurdist horror of one man holding back a tide of blood.’
- ‘Pataphysics is the absurdist concept of a philosophy or science dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics.’
- ‘They are examples of the aggressive, absurdist art they advocate.’
- ‘He based a fictional bomber squadron on the island for his absurdist 1961 book, which became a cult classic.’
- ‘His eight models are absurdist and visionary monuments to human, societal, and governmental follies, abominations, and questionable policies.’
- ‘It's easy shuttling between a style of largely absurdist speculation and sudden pockets of very serious assertion.’
- ‘The thriller plot is fragmented, subsumed in absurdist detail and consistently mapped onto the struggle between body and landscape.’
noun
A writer or artist who deals with absurdist themes.
‘the French absurdists of the fifties’- ‘The serious wackos, the obsessive-compulsive absurdists, may be beyond therapy.’
- ‘These are fertile times for political absurdists, a fact that's clearly not been lost on them.’
- ‘The real heroes of the piece are the overthinking absurdists whose apparently humorous pranks stemmed from an eternally uncompromising absolutism.’
- ‘He turned his science prof into an unhinged dictator in a satire that was later to be championed as a masterpiece by the absurdists.’
- ‘Absurdists can only laugh so long, until the horror paralyzes them.’
- ‘It's a party comprised of anarchists, absurdists, activists, practical jokers, perverts, weirdos, maniacs, oddballs, and morons.’
- ‘His paranoid and nightmarish world became a gold mine for Freudians, existentialists, and absurdists.’
- ‘Most of the so-called absurdists never bothered to light just one little candle in the darkness of existence, because cursing the darkness had become their poetry.’
- ‘We keep the tradition of the first Absurdists, who wrote and performed and drew and danced in response to the horror and devastation of world war.’
- ‘He was initially portrayed as some kind of Pythonesque absurdist.’
Are You Learning English? Here Are Our Top English Tips