From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishvaudevillevau‧de‧ville /ˈvɔːdəvɪl $ ˈvɒː-/ noun [uncountable] American English APTa type of theatre entertainment, popular from the 1880s to the 1950s, in which there were many short performances of different kinds, including singing, dancing, jokes etc → music hall
Examples from the Corpus
vaudeville• After its closing on Dec. 9,1906, it soon reopened as the Empire, a vaudeville and movie house.• Tillman had current information on the airport vaudeville.• A more fundamental objection has been that music-hall and vaudeville were essentially controlled by showmen who were of course entrepreneurs.• The music-hall and vaudeville were transitional as really was all nineteenth-century popular culture.• In 1915, Eubie teamed with an ambitious young entrepreneur, Noble Sissle, for vaudeville appearances.• You could have set Greenwich Mean Time by the great vaudeville comedians.• What used to be like the Old Vic has become the vaudeville of Thatcherism Undone.• Which is why in the vaudeville days they sometimes used a hook.Origin vaudeville (1700-1800) French Old French vaudevire type of popular song, from vau-de-Vire “valley of Vire”, town in northwest France where such songs were written 