jester

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. One given to jesting.
2. n. A fool or buffoon at medieval courts.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A story-teller; a reciter of tales, adventures, and romances.
2. n. One who is addicted to jesting; one who is given to witticisms, jokes, and pranks.
3. n. A court-fool or professed sayer of witty things and maker of amusement, maintained by a prince or noble in the middle ages and later. The dress of the jester was usually showy, or even gaudy, and toward the end of the time when jesters were employed it was always typically party-colored or motley; but, as the jesters in some early courts were men of considerable intellectual ability, and in some cases of good family, their dress was not always conspicuously distinguished from that of those with whom they mingled. The bauble, sometimes very small and of rich materials, was the only certain badge of the jester's employment. The fools of Shakspere's plays indicate a certain lowering of the rank of the jester in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. So far as is known, the last one employed in England was Archie Armstrong (died 1672), in the court of James I., and afterward of Charles I. See cockscomb, bauble, motley.

Wiktionary

1. n. one who jests, jokes or mocks
2. n. a person in bright garb and fool’s cap who amused a mediaeval royal court.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A buffoon; a merry-andrew; a court fool.
2. n. A person addicted to jesting, or to indulgence in light and amusing talk.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a professional clown employed to entertain a king or nobleman in the Middle Ages