Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Amusingly odd or whimsically comical.
- n. Archaic A buffoon.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A waggish fellow; one whose practice or occupation is to raise mirth by odd tricks; a jester, merry-andrew, or buffoon.
- n. A farce; a dramatic entertainment intended to amuse.
- Waggish; facetious; comical.
- Ludicrous; queer; laughable; ridiculous: as, a droll story; a droll scene.
- Synonyms Comical, Funny, etc. (see ludicrous); amusing, farcical, waggish, fantastic, whimsical.
- To jest; play the buffoon.
- To lead or influence by jest or trick; cajole.
- To turn into a jest.
Wiktionary
- adj. oddly humorous; whimsical, amusing in a quaint way; waggish
- n. archaic A buffoon
- v. archaic To joke, to jest.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Queer, and fitted to provoke laughter; ludicrous from oddity; amusing and strange.
- n. One whose practice it is to raise mirth by odd tricks; a jester; a buffoon; a merry-andrew.
- n. Something exhibited to raise mirth or sport, as a puppet, a farce, and the like.
- v. rare To jest; to play the buffoon.
- v. To lead or influence by jest or trick; to banter or jest; to cajole.
- v. rare To make a jest of; to set in a comical light.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. comical in an odd or whimsical manner
Etymologies
- From French drôle ("comical, odd, funny"), from drôle ("buffoon") from Middle French drolle ("a merry fellow, pleasant rascal") from Old French drolle ("one who lives luxuriously"), from Middle Dutch drol ("fat little man, goblin") from Old Norse troll ("giant, troll") (compare Middle High German trolle ("clown")), from Proto-Germanic *truzlan (“creature which walks clumsily”), from Proto-Germanic *truzlanan (“to walk with short steps”). More at troll. (Wiktionary)
- French drôle, buffoon, droll, from Old French drolle, bon vivant, possibly from Middle Dutch drol, goblin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“You also get Truffaut's interview excerpts with Hitch, which is as close to a full commentary from him as we'll ever have. imagine what a treat that would be: Hitchcock holding forth in droll glory for nearly two hours.”
The Huffington Post: Michael Giltz: Halloween DVDs: The Exorcist, Psycho, Troll 2 and More
“Maybe more time spent in the stacks would have contributed to an understanding of what the word droll means?”
“She calls his droll accusations stupid and misguided, just about.”
“He had always assumed she was a genius, her name a droll ironic touch.”
“Him whom we allowed formerly for a certain pleasant subtilty, and natural way of giving you an unexpected hit, called a droll, is now mimicked by a biter, who is a dull fellow, that tells you a lie with a grave face, and laughs at you for knowing him no better than to believe him.”
“Apropos of this small affair, I can recall a droll scene, _de eodem genere_, which I witnessed within a week of the other.”
“Those who've seen Michael Winterbottom's film A Cock and Bull Story, a surreal treatment of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, will recall the droll rivalry of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan, playing themselves when the periwigs came off.”
“KING: And it worked for your kind of droll approach.”
“In JAFL 31: 480-481 is given a Guatemala droll which is clearly derived from the Arabian Nights form of our story.”
“We have already noted the transition in Prof. Schwedoffs theory of external origin of some hailstones -- and the implications that, to a former generation, seemed so preposterous -- "droll" was the word -- that there are in inter-planetary regions volumes of water -- whether they have fishes and frogs in them or not.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘droll’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 330 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Naresh_Gre2
convoke, cosset, coterie, declaim, distaff, doff, dovetail, droll, dyspeptic, egress, ersatz, euphemism and 108 more...
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GRE
droll, dyspeptic, ebullient, ardor, edify, efficacy, malinger, mannered, martinet, maudlin, mendacious, mendicant and 102 more...
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words to describe people ~
theic, docile, droll, pallid, despondent, sallow, paraphilia, ascetic, grandiloquent, garrulous, charlatan
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 483 more...
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Send in the clowns
Bozo, Feste, Ronald McDonald, Krusty, Touchstone, Yorick, The Gravediggers, Clown, Dromio of Syracuse, Dromio of Ephesus, Puck, clown fish and 88 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1908 more...
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Verecund, flivver, etc
Just some words I happen to enjoy. Some thread-worn, some not.
yegg, yob, verecund, amatory, fermata, threepenny, gruntled, flivver, gamboge, decolletage, ordure, nudnik and 173 more...
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Sense and Sensibility
Words from the book by Jane Austen.
shew, shewn, shewing, shewed, dupe, wither, rambled, extorting, cavil, rap, mildness, controuled and 133 more...
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Words I Should Use More Often
Words that I'll use to sound erudite.
fungible, aggrandizement, tete-a-tete, sententious, serendipitous, fortuitous, lugubrious, declivity, propitiatory, volubility, august, tenebrous and 214 more...
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Words to Learn
colloquium, resilient, ruminate, missive, sylvan, indefatigable, preclude, prowess, quiescent, caustic, verdant, specter and 119 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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1st cut
abeyance, abscission, abyss, accretion, acidulous, adulterate, adumbrate, aerie, ameliorate, anachoronistic, analgesia, anodyne and 315 more...
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My Words
heuristic, malapropism, vicissitude, discursive, interstitial, velleity, phosphene, pandiculate, obdormition, vertiginous, flibbertigibbet, truculent and 128 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for droll.
pikachu Droll thing life is--that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.
-Heart of Darkness, Conrad Mar 20, 2011
prasadkdr His appearance has been a droll but not his contribution. Apr 28, 2008
frindley Thinking of "droll" as a noun brings to mind the word drab as a noun. Apr 12, 2008
yarb His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.
- Clement Clarke Moore, The Night before Christmas Apr 10, 2008
sarra curious discussion herein Apr 10, 2008
emmy a jester! Mar 10, 2008