GILBERTIAN • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Gilbertian

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adjective

Gilbertian adj.

Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the style of William S. Gilbert; as, Gilbertian libretti.

Wildly comic and improbable, as in Gilbert and Sullivan operas; as, Gilbertian coincidences. "a Gilbertian world people with foundlings and changelings."

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Etymology of 'Gilbertian'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Gilbertian" Quotes from Famous Books

... has been approached, nor has the opera, so far as my information goes, ever been given with the same Gilbertian verve and swing. The subsequent performance of "The Mikado" by the authorized company, seen throughout the United States, seemed by comparison ...

— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... inspiration and dumb at thy chorus; we are sceptical as to thy soldier's love: Nancy, we know from realistic poets of the Barrack Room, took up with another young man before her month was out; and as for the black, he is the object of our devoutest solicitude. Go to! thou art surely a Gilbertian travesty, a deliciously droll compound of vulgar patriotism and maudlin pathos. And yet somehow there are tears on the smiling cheeks of the Man from Town. Let us go out and hear the nightingales and be sentimental ...

— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill