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Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of jocularity
Explanation
A state of cheer or good humor is jocularity. It takes a certain amount of jocularity to tell a really good joke. Someone who has the quality of jocularity is playfully funny — a jokester or clown is known for his jocularity. A teacher's jocularity can transform a boring history class into something fun. Jocularity, the adjective jocular, and joke all stem from a common Latin root, iocus, or "joke."
Vocabulary lists containing jocularity
The Scarlet Letter
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Big Science
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"Simon's Saga," Vocabulary from Episode 10
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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.
See Examples For:
No smile, no jocularity, no sense that he had just won a major victory.
From BBC ● Feb. 14, 2026
David Zinn’s scenic design adopts a puppet theater jocularity and Andrea Hood’s storybook costumes are as vivid as a box of Colorforms.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 16, 2024
For all its burlesque jocularity, Mr. Scott asserted, his job was no less taxing as a result.
From New York Times ● Sep. 4, 2021
What kept Mr. Jacomo in that place of honor, far more than his jocularity, was his competence and ability to adjust — profitably — when even the best-laid plans went awry.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 7, 2020
Raymond Birge, who became department chairman upon Elmer Hall’s passing that same year, was fond of remarking with a wry jocularity, “I don’t know what goes on over there in that Radiation Lab.”
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Then there was a banquet, at which Teacher Scopes stammered a few embarrassed words and the important lawyers indulged in brilliant jocularities.
From Time Magazine Archive
Not that the jocularities were inane beyond the usual, but failure made them seem so.
From The Pretty Lady by Arnold Bennett
Under such circumstances men at times give vent to jocularities which sound coarse and shocking.
From A Maid of the Silver Sea by John Oxenham
He has, however, according to Horace, some low jocularities; and those smart sayings, which made the vulgar laugh, made him be pitied by men of higher taste.
From The Works of Samuel Johnson, Volume 05 Miscellaneous Pieces by Samuel Johnson
Normanby, still smarting from the attacks of Brougham, was made the mark for these jocularities, after his health being drunk thus: ‘Lord Normanby and the liberation of the Prisoners.’
From The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 (Volume 1 of 3) by Charles Greville
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.
