joker
/ˈdʒəʊkə
/noun
1A person who is fond of joking.But the joke is on the joker, as any toddler could have told him....
- It is easy to see this in the case of a tendentious joke in which the joker, by dressing up his obscene thoughts or aggressive impulses in humorous guise, is circumventing his own internal inhibitions.
- Anyway, you can always spot a person from Osaka as they always make bad jokes apparently - the jokers of Japan, a bit like the way that all Scousers are funny in the UK.
Synonyms
humorist, comedian, comedienne, comic, funny man/woman, wag, wit, jester;
prankster, practical joker, hoaxer, trickster, clown
informal card, jokester, wisecracker
archaic quiz, droll, merry andrew
rare quipster, gagster, jokesmith, punster, kidder, farceur
1.1 informal A foolish or inept person: a bunch of jokers...
- The response is lukewarm: the youth prefer Net jokes to messages from what they call the bunch of jokers.
- All these jokers not only want to have their cake and eat it too, but smash it in the public's face.
- The Bahamian worker can ill afford to have union dues subtracted from the pay envelope, to support uneducated jokers who know nothing about economics, to bring the wheels of the economy to a standstill.
2A playing card, typically bearing the figure of a jester, used in some games as a wild card.You Need: 2 decks of regular playing cards with jokers per person....
- Secondly, the only true works of art in regular playing card, are face cards the jokers and the ace of spades.
- Some people also use jokers as wild cards, which can represent any rank.
3US A clause unobtrusively inserted in a bill or document and affecting its operation in a way not immediately apparent.‘That joker is our intellectual property,’ says George White, USPC vice-president.
Phrases
the joker in the pack
Rhymes
- Beatlemania
- Beatlemaniac
- Beatles
- Beatles-esque
- Beatlesque
- beat-match
- beat-matching
- beatnik
- beat off
- beat officer
- beat one's breast
- beat one's (or the) meat
- be at one's wits' end
- Beaton, Sir Cecil
- beat (or bang) the drum of (or for)
- be at (or have come to) an end
- beat (or kick) the shit out of
- be at (or on) the receiving end
- beat (or smash) someone to a pulp
- beat (or turn) swords into ploughshares
- beat (or whale) the tar out of
- beat oscillator
- beat poet
- beat poetry
- Beatrix