Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A witty remark. See Synonyms at joke.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A witty sentence, phrase, or remark; an observation characterized by wit.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A witty saying; a sentence or phrase which is affectedly witty; an attempt at wit; a conceit.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter
Etymologies
- wit + -icism; coined in the 1670s by John Dryden, in analogy with criticism. (Wiktionary)
- Blend of witty and criticism. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“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?”
“First of all, with his interlocutors themselves, when his witticism is a direct retort to one of them.”
“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.”
“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.”
“For every "witticism" compiled by Media Matters, analogous screeds could be pointed out by right-wing blogs.”
“But this isn't a joke (as Eugene notes by calling it a "witticism").”
“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.”
“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.”
““shock” of the witticism is a powerful one; while mere fun will have no power over them if it jar on their moral taste.”
“[1] An example of these amusing and confusing contentions is the popular -- I might almost say classic -- witticism which is often resurrected at the expense of _Punch_.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘witticism’.
-
250 Spelling Words
A selected sampling of words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
orecchiette, rhabdomancy, guayabera, orthoepy, opisthenar, maguey, proem, ciabatta, cioppino, banns, concinnity, asthenia and 237 more...
-
EN - eloquence in public speaking
Key words from "The Training of a Public Speaker" by Grenville Kleiser (New York and London, 1920)
beget, imago, approbation, orator, peroration, Cicero, eloquence, elocution, rhetoric, premeditate, plead, Isocrates and 264 more...
-
Wordplay & Pun
wordplay, pound, conceit, clinch, joke, quibble, equivoque, double-entendre, quillet, calembour, carriwitchet, paranomasia and 90 more...
-
Words For Novel (Part 2)
fable, sprite, syphilitic, anvil, wonderstruck, vertigo, bridled, tufted, fettered, savvy, tweed fedora, tryst and 255 more...
-
wit
with wit mess (between less & ness)
wit, wot, wote, wost, wist, weeting, sense, wite, witticism, insulse, wittiness, wittiness witness and 34 more...
-
Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 3063 more... -
The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
-
ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
-
GRE List
anthem, ablution, apocrypha, augur, cardinal, cathedral, chant, chapel, cloister, conformist, cult, devout and 145 more...
-
JLaughWork's Words
sesquipedalian, perspicacity, fervid, onomatopoeia, eschatology, prognostication, pedagogue, expiation, integrity, metamorphosis, supercilious, xenophilia and 229 more...
-
stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
-
beautiful words
quench, metropolitan, dollop, cucumber, aesthetic, superfluous, gastronomy, nymph, obsequious, serendipity, champagne, gossamer and 125 more...
-
dienekes's Words
chutzpah, lexicon, intrepid, pedagogical, schlemiel, schism, erudite, anathema, pugilist, jaunty, paradigm, automaton and 949 more...
-
Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
-
Words That Populate My Mind
This is a collection of words I love, old ones that I love the sound of when I repeat them for years and new ones coined in news articles on up and coming trends and technologies - most of them I k...
aroma, mojo, blithely, fringe, fray, synchronicity, doublespeak, buzzword, thoughtcrime, portmanteau, newspeak, oldspeak and 963 more...
-
big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for witticism.
slumry I like it too. Jul 12, 2007
seanahan This is a good word. It is underused, I think. Jul 12, 2007
slumry Coined by Dryden. Jul 12, 2007