Cutting up

Usage examples of clowning.

Through the glass pane Joe spotted Chet along with the other clowning students.

With his record, Rosen shouldn't even be clowning for a third-rate outfit, let alone a world-class circus like the Montero.

And on the walls, as in most of the rooms at High Point Farm, framed photos of family-on horseback, on bicycles, with dogs, cats, friends and relatives, husky Mikey-Junior clowning for the camera in his high school graduation gown twirling his cap on a forefinger, skinny Patrick, a ninth grader at the time, diving from the high board at Wolf s Head Lake, arrested at the apogee of what looked to have been a backward somersault, maybe a double somersault.

There was Mom, irrepressible Morn, clowning on the back porch in a shabby old plaid parka of Mike's, gripping a thick five-foot stalactite icicle descending from the roof, grinning at the camera.

The laughter at these tossed-together meals was such that Marianne, shy of her employer, found it difficult not to look at him-how could you avoid it, with Whit clowning shameless as a child, his good moods as dramatic and somehow coercive as the bad?

All eyes were on this man as with almost ritualistic earnestness, in the midst of much joking, laughing, clowning about of the players, he pitched underhand the dazzling-white softball to a figure crouched at bat-Sable Mills, herself-an energetic and feisty figure, yet not much of an athlete-Sable with her brassy hair newly cut in a virtual flattop, a wicked silver clamp on one ear, in black sleeveless sweater and matching jodhpurs that fitted her wiry body as if she'd been poured into them like melted wax.

As we scrounged around those villages on the east bank of the Hudson, with Miss Howard asking anybody and everybody she could find about the Fraser family, El Niño and I became better and better friends, clowning, laughing, and telling any troublesome or re­sentful locals we ran into just where they could take their small-town hostility.

So we were able to talk and act pretty freely, a fact what quickly led El Niño (who couldn’t read English) and me (who wasn’t much use with official docu­ments) to start clowning around among the chairs and tables, letting Cyrus and Miss Howard attend to the real work and only straightening up at those moments when we were told to roust the clerk and tell him to fetch an­other batch of files and bound records.

She had this strange idea that clowning was in the nature of unskilled labor, and used us harder than the animals.

Maggie sighed deeply, clowning again, but this time there was pleasure rather than wistfulness running through her voice.

He chuckled and in a clowning mood he shook hands with me and greeted me ceremoniously.

I thought for a moment that he was going to start his disturbing clowning again, but he went back right away to his cross-legged sitting position.

I had never seen don Juan clowning like that and felt almost embarrassed to look at him.

His clowning told your body about the absurdity of trying to understand everything.

Maniacally clowning and making faces, he wheeled back and forth along the line of march, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, often weaving in and out among the vehicles and the flip-flopping three Chinese and the plodding elephants and camel.