Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A witty remark. synonym: joke.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A witty sentence, phrase, or remark; an observation characterized by wit.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A witty saying; a sentence or phrase which is affectedly witty; an attempt at wit; a conceit.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
witty remark .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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You try to pass off a witticism from a film everyone on this planet, except members of hunter-gatherer tribes in the high plateaus of New Guinea and the Amish, have seen?
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First of all, with his interlocutors themselves, when his witticism is a direct retort to one of them.
Laughter : an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic Henri Bergson 1900
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"If you are about to say what I think you are… some sort of feeble inane 'witticism' like 'may the farts be with you', then I strongly recommend you think again, or I'll beat you to a pulp."
Archive 2009-04-01 David Hadley 2009
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"If you are about to say what I think you are… some sort of feeble inane 'witticism' like 'may the farts be with you', then I strongly recommend you think again, or I'll beat you to a pulp."
A Long Time Ago In A Chip Shop Far Away… David Hadley 2009
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For every "witticism" compiled by Media Matters, analogous screeds could be pointed out by right-wing blogs.
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While Black Russell was answering Jeff Probst's question about his tribemates, Ben interrupted with the "witticism": "Jeff, I've never read that book: Things Losers Say."
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But this isn't a joke (as Eugene notes by calling it a "witticism").
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And, by the way, I think the quote — "Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact I spent four years overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia" — was meant as a kind of witticism, a play on the words "foreign relations."
"Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact I spent four years overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia." Ann Althouse 2007
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And, by the way, I think the quote — "Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact I spent four years overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia" — was meant as a kind of witticism, a play on the words "foreign relations."
Archive 2007-11-01 Ann Althouse 2007
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Thus, I can hardly claim to be wholly enraged by Megamayor's latest "witticism," which promises to really piss off the IOC: "Why the hell would I want to go to a place like Mombassa," Mayor Mel Lastman said to a freelance journalist before leaving for a trip to Kenya to pitch the Toronto Olympic bid.
slumry commented on the word witticism
Coined by Dryden.
July 12, 2007
seanahan commented on the word witticism
This is a good word. It is underused, I think.
July 12, 2007
slumry commented on the word witticism
I like it too.
July 12, 2007