Word of the Day Archive
Saturday May 5, 2001
jocular \JOK-yuh-luhr\ , adjective:
1. Given to joking or jesting.
2. Characterized by joking; playful.
He had not been a jocular man, and occasionally, while she was laughing with Bob, she had caught him studying her, covertly, as if she were of some alien, and slightly frightening, species.
-- Gabrielle Donnelly, The Girl in the Photograph
But when I saw him then, he did not labour under any lowness of spirits, but, on the contrary, was very jocular in his manner and language.
-- Times (London), February 9, 1830
Blues lyrics are no less dark when jocular ("Nobody loves me but my mother / And she could be jiving too" -- B. B. King).
-- Roy Blount Jr., "There's More to Southern Humor Than Foot-Long Pecan Rolls", New York Times, December 11, 1994
But this time, the mood was a good deal more jocular than reverential.
-- Richard Bernstein, "After Nobel Prize, Caviar for Russian Poet", New York Times, October 31, 1987
Jocular comes from Latin jocularis, from joculus, diminutive of jocus, "joke."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for jocular
