What does farcing mean?
Farcing is the practice of padding something out — cramming it with material that does not properly belong there. The word descends from the Latin verb farcire, 'to stuff', the same root that gave us farce, which originally referred to stuffing rather than comedy. In literature and rhetoric, farcing describes the discredited habit of bolstering a speech, sermon, or written work with borrowed quotations, digressions, and other superfluous ornament; a writer guilty of it has produced something padded rather than argued. In medieval church music, farcing names the insertion of new Latin text into an existing chant, most famously into the long vocal flourishes of the Kyrie — a technique scholars also call troping. Today the term survives mainly in literary criticism and musicology, where it retains a faintly censorious tone: to accuse a work of farcing is to say it is stuffed rather than substantial.
Material inserted to pad out a text or, in medieval music, words added to a melismatic chant.
"The farcing added to the Gloria was copied by three different hands."
Chiefly used in musicological scholarship on medieval tropes.
To pad out a written work, speech, or argument with superfluous or borrowed material.
"He was accused of farcing his lectures with quotations he barely understood."
Now rare outside literary criticism; connotes bloated, dishonest composition.
As a countable noun referring to inserted passages, the standard plural is 'farcings'; the singular mass-like use ('the farcing') is more common in musicological contexts.
"The manuscript contains several later farcings added to the original chants."
Before it meant a bad joke, 'farce' meant stuffing a sausage — so 'farcing' is literally the ancient art of cramming words where they don't belong.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of farcing
Farcing derives from the Latin verb farcire, meaning 'to cram' or 'to stuff', the root also behind farce and farcical. In medieval use it named both the rhetorical vice of padding prose and the liturgical practice of adding words to chant, where the inserted text was known as a farcia or farse. The English word entered usage through early modern writing, appearing in authors such as Shakespeare's era as a term for stuffing compositions with extraneous matter. Cognates sharing the farcire root include the medical term infarction (tissue 'stuffed' or obstructed) and the veterinary disease farcy.
Related word forms
How farcing is actually used
Farcing is now rare and largely confined to literary criticism, discussions of rhetoric, and musicological scholarship on medieval chant. It carries a mildly negative connotation, implying bloated or dishonest composition rather than legitimate elaboration. The related musical term is often spelled 'farsing' in some scholarship.
Easily confused with farcing
Farce is today chiefly a form of broad comedy, whereas farcing is the act of stuffing or padding a text or chant with extraneous material — the comedic sense developed later from the older 'stuffing' sense.
Forcing means compelling or pressuring something to happen (or hastening growth), while farcing means padding or cramming material into something; they differ by one letter but are unrelated in meaning.