an entertainer who wears a grotesquely comic costume and makeup and performs simple knockabout comedy routines; specif a traditionally dressed comedy performer in a circus
somebody who habitually acts in a ridiculously comical way or plays the fool; a joker
archaic an unsophisticated person, esp a rustic
clownery noun
clownish adj
[perhaps from early French coulon settler, from Latin colonus colonist, farmer, from colonia: see colony]