Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being jocular; merriment; jesting.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Jesting; merriment.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Joking, humorous remarks or behaviour.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun activity characterized by good humor
  • noun fun characterized by humor
  • noun a feeling facetious merriment

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

jocular +‎ -ity

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Examples

  • Like Bush, his jocularity is a thin veil over a white hot temper, easily engaged when his will or knowledge is questioned.

    McCain: I Can Demagogue About Iran Because Public Is Ignorant 2009

  • Among a giddy and light-minded people, they have appropriated to themselves the post of honour of pedantry: they confound the levity of jocularity, which is quite compatible with profundity in art, with the levity of shallowness, which (as a natural gift or natural defect,) is so frequent among their countrymen.

    Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature August Wilhelm Schlegel 1806

  • I can't help but think they thought they were being funny or clever alas they missed the mark but look at what such "jocularity" inspires in others!

    delagar delagar 2009

  • But it did seem to me at a time when there's some very sober news around the world, especially in the Middle East, this kind of jocularity and sort of towel snapping with reporters did seem odd.

    CNN Transcript Aug 21, 2006 2006

  • Over the barton-gate the dairyman saw them, and came forward, throwing into his face the kind of jocularity deemed appropriate in Talbothays and its vicinity on the re-appearance of the newly-married.

    Tess of the d'Urbervilles 1891

  • Over the barton-gate the dairyman saw them, and came forward, throwing into his face the kind of jocularity deemed appropriate in Talbothays and its vicinity on the re-appearance of the newly-married.

    Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1884

  • (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed to-day.) "And you can refuse, you mean, eh?

    Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

  • (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather

    Bleak House Charles Dickens 1841

  • Enough jocularity, or what passes for it from a Wall Street Journal scrivener.

    Waking Up to Greece's Default Position Irwin Stelzer 2011

  • Thin reasoning perhaps, but the bassoon and double bass duet in the "Menuet" has an earthy Balkan jocularity and the whole work is vigorously charming.

    Brad Hill: Salonen Brings Hungarian Echoes to the NY Philharmonic Brad Hill 2011

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