jeu d'esprit
Americannoun
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a witticism.
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a literary work showing keen wit or intelligence rather than profundity.
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of jeu d'esprit
Literally, “play of spirit”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
After a 10-year absence, Mr. Angell resumed his annual rhyming jeu d’esprit in 2008:
From Washington Post • May 20, 2022
In addition, science fiction grandmaster Robert Silverberg describes how “F&SF” got its start and Paul Di Filippo offers a scholarly jeu d’esprit about a long-lost collaboration between Jules Verne and H.G.
From Washington Post • Oct. 2, 2019
Ratmansky’s Violente keeps her arms closer to her chest, and deploys them more softly, so that the pointing becomes a sort of jeu d’esprit.
From The New Yorker • Jun. 8, 2015
His photograph, although a jeu d’esprit, exudes a whiff of melancholy because like all photographs it’s a reminder, with that shadow, of something gone except in the picture and our recollections of it.
From New York Times • Oct. 5, 2010
In the Apophthegms of the Marquis of Worcester is related a punning jeu d’esprit upon the word Troy, between the old Marquis and his royal guest Charles the First.
From A Tour throughout South Wales and Monmouthshire by Barber, J. T.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
