Freedonia, Fredonia or Fredon is the name given to several fictional countries. The name was used for some aspects of the United States in the 19th century, and later popularized by the 1933 Marx Brothers film Duck Soup where it was the name of the fictional country in which the film was set. Over time, the word has come to have a more generic meaning, anything from a noun describing a plausible yet fictional country, to an adjective ("Freedonian") used to characterize a place like the Freedonia of Duck Soup. Because the Marx Brothers' film had so many qualities—autocracy, diminutiveness, and obscurity, to name but a few—a place can be described as "Freedonian" for having any one of these qualities.