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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:
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
His attempts at jocularity had been thoughtless and misguided but not malevolent, his lawyer said, in a submission to the panel.
From BBC ● Jan. 19, 2023
Gleeful, as defined in the dictionary, suggests a sense of merriment, jocularity.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 4, 2022
There’s a kind of jocularity and a camaraderie among you, but there’s also a current of tension and rivalry.
From New York Times ● Dec. 17, 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
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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
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Ireland has been prolific in delineators of her suffering and crimes, jocularities and bulls, both in poetry and prose.
From Sketches of Reforms and Reformers, of Great Britain and Ireland by Stanton, Henry B.
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 Greville, Charles
It seems, from some jocularities attributed to his lordship, that he adds to his many other claims to distinction that of being a man of wit.
From The Humorous Poetry of the English Language; from Chaucer to Saxe by Parton, James
Under such circumstances men at times give vent to jocularities which sound coarse and shocking.
From A Maid of the Silver Sea by Oxenham, John
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.