1540s, "type of pantomime dance;" 1580s, "professional comic fool;" 1590s in the general sense "a clown, a joker;" from French bouffon (16c.), from Italian buffone "jester," from buffa "joke, jest, pleasantry," from buffare "to puff out the cheeks," a comic gesture, of echoic origin. Also see -oon.

1764, "comic actor in an opera," from Italian buffo "a comic actor," from buffare "to mock; to puff" (see buffoon).

"make blunt resistance to, put off with abrupt denial," 1580s, from obsolete French rebuffer "to check, snub," from Italian ribuffare "to check, chide, snide," from ribuffo "a snub," from ri- "back" (from Latin re-, see re-) + buffo "a puff," a word of imitative origin (compare buffoon, also buffet (n.2)). Related: Rebuffed; rebuffing.

"low, vile, buffoon-like scoffing or jeering; indecent or gross abusiveness," c. 1500, from Latin scurrilitas "buffoonery," from scurrilis "buffoon-like" (see scurrilous).

"given to the use of low and indecent language," "using such language as only the licence of a buffoon can warrant" [Johnson], 1570s, from scurrile "coarsely joking" (implied in scurrility), from Latin scurrilis "buffoon-like," from scurra "fashionable city idler, man-about-town," later "buffoon." According to Klein's sources, "an Etruscan loan-word." Related: Scurrilously; scurrilousness. As a verb, scurrilize was tried (c. 1600).

"buffoon, fool, stupid person," 1550s, from Old French mome "a mask. Related" Momish. The adjective introduced by "Lewis Carroll" is an unrelated nonsense word.

c. 1600, "a buffoon who practices gesticulations" [Johnson], from French mime "mimic actor" (16c.) and directly from Latin mimus, from Greek mimos "imitator, mimic, actor, mime, buffoon," a word of unknown origin.  In reference to a performance, 1932 as "a pantomime," earlier (1640s) in a classical context: The ancient mimes of the Italian Greeks and Romans were dramatic performances, generally vulgar, with spoken lines, consisting of farcical mimicry of real events and persons.