[f. F. travesti pa. pple.: see prec. App. first used in the pa. pple. travestied = F. travesti or It. travestito. The simple vb. has not been found until after 1700. Cf. the history of TRAVESTED.]
1. trans. To alter in dress or appearance; to disguise by such alteration.
1686. F. Spence, trans. Varillas’ Ho. Medicis, 408. He slunk out of Rome thus ridiculously travesty’d.
1754. Warburton, Bolingbroke’s Philos., ii. 73. Old Naturalism thus travestied under the name of Religion, his Lordship bestows … on his own dear Country.
1789. Caledonian Mercury, 22 Oct., 2/2. They had travestied a letter of mine, but when the original was produced, the imposter was unmasked.
1827. Scott, Napoleon, Introd. ix. II. 305. Processions entered…, travestied in priestly garments.
1853. Felton, Fam. Lett., ix. (1865), 70. About ten courses of meat, so mixed, blended, and travestied with seasonings and vegetables, that it would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer to tell what any of them is made of.
2. To turn into ridicule by grotesque parody or imitation; to caricature, burlesque.
1673. Bp. Ward, Apol. Myst. Gosp., 42. Are the Mysteries of this Gospel … to be travestied or turned into Burlesque or Macaronique?
1756. J. Warton, Ess. Pope, I. 57. One would imagine that John Dennis … had been here attempting to travesty this description of the restoration of Eurydice to life.
1874. Mahaffy, Soc. Life Greece, vii. 197. The comic poets … travestied known characters so as to make them hardly recognisable.
1888. Burgon, Lives 12 Gd. Men, II. vi. 87. The true version of a story which … has been grossly travestied in the repetition.
Hence Travestied ppl. a.
1864. Ess. Social Subjects, 186. A reason which barely represents half your motives to yourself is sure to enter the other mind in such travestied guise as to convey nothing as you intend it.
1891. S. C. Scrivener, Our Fields & Cities, 68. Teaching the older histories from a travestied standpoint.
