“Travesty” has farcical connotations; it’s actually related to “transvestite.” A disaster that could be described as a farce or a degraded imitation may be called a travesty: “The trial—since the defense lawyer slept through most of it—was a travesty of justice.” A tragedy is an altogether more serious matter.
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This is the ten-year anniversary of the Common Errors in English Usage calendar. To celebrate, we are bringing back some of our favorite interesting, funny, but sometimes merely silly entries through the years before going on hiatus in 2016.
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