Up until about the 1970s, a movie that was a goofy, possibly slapstick comedy would be advertised as “zany” and “madcap.” Both of those words are less common in recent decades, but still around.
By coincidence, both words appeared in English around the 1500s, even though that century isn’t generally remembered as a golden era of humor (or maybe we’ve lost the most important parts of the history of that time). “Madcap” is a straightforward combination of “mad,” meaning crazy, and “cap,” which at the time would have meant either a kind of hat or a hood. Madcap originally meant insane rather than funny — this explains the “mad” part of the word, but why the “cap” was added on is anybody’s guess. Maybe it was some sort of attempt at public labeling, like a “dunce cap.” “Madcap” wasn’t the only instance of this; there was also “goosecap,” which meant a fool, and “huffcap,” which was any liquor strong enough to “huff your cap” (today we would say “blow the top of your head off”). Maybe the 1500s were a golden era of hats and comedy.
“Zany” was originally a name for a character. In Italian, “John” is “Giovanni,” and “Johnny” is “Gianni.” The clowns in the Commedia dell’ Arte shows were all known as “Giovanni” or “Gianni,” and “Zanni” was one way the latter was spelled (and probably pronounced). “Zanni” was imported from Italian into French, where it became “Zani,” and not long after became the English “zany.” By the time it made it to English, though, it wasn’t a name anymore; it was a noun. A comic performer — especially if their act involved imitating somebody — was “a zany.”
By the early 1600s “zany” was being used more the way it is today: as an adjective. There it stayed for centuries, just waiting for the invention of movies and movie posters. And that’s the whole story — featuring your two favorite zany word characters and their madcap adventures through the years.
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