Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A book containing a collection of jests, jokes, or funny stories or sayings.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Chardin tells us that houses of male prostitution were common in Persia whilst those of women were unknown: the same is the case in the present day and the boys are prepared with extreme care by diet, baths, depilation, unguents and a host of artists in cosmetics. 402 Le Vice is looked upon at most as a peccadillo and its mention crops up in every jest-book.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Iranian jest-book: Abu Mohammed hight Lazybones belongs to the cycle of “Sindbad the Seaman,” with a touch of

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • For instance, there are many short intervals during the day, between studies and pleasures: instead of sitting idle and yawning, in those intervals, take up any book, though ever so trifling a one, even down to a jest-book; it is still better than doing nothing.

    Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman 2005

  • His gall rises at a new church with a high-pitched roof; a full-breasted black silk waistcoat is with him a symbol of Satan; and a profane jest-book would not, in his view, more foully desecrate the church seat of a

    Barchester Towers 2004

  • In this particular he runs the risk of presenting himself to the public in the relation that the dumb wife in the jest-book held to her husband, when, having spent half of his fortune to obtain the cure of her imperfection, he was willing to have bestowed the other half to restore her to her former condition.

    Waverley 2004

  • He bought an American jest-book, full of ideas wholly new to me, and these he committed to heart, and brought them out as his own productions.

    Erema Richard Doddridge 2004

  • But there was one whose trick gave more universal pleasure than all the rest; for observing the manner in which I had disposed my books on the table before me, he very dextrously displaced one of them, and put an obscene jest-book of his own in the place.

    The Vicar of Wakefield 2004

  • Firm Gundry smiled; on his lean dry face there shone a little flicker, which made me think of the time when he bought a jest-book, published at Cincinnati, to make himself agreeable to my mind.

    Erema Richard Doddridge 2004

  • I am afraid that J. M.G.'s knowledge of our old "voiager" is limited to some jest-book of more modern times, which attributes to him sayings and doings of which he is perfectly guiltless.

    Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 Various

  • Nature was considered as a sort of fantastic being, with a turn for the humorous; and the world was treated as a sort of extended jest-book, where the poet pointed out the bon-mots [Footnote: French; pronounced bong-mos.] and acted in some degree as corrector of the Press.

    Mosaics of Grecian History Marcius Willson

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