What's the difference between amusing and banter?

Amusing


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Amuse
  • (a.) Giving amusement; diverting; as, an amusing story.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It was amusing: he's still working away and this picture of him is hanging in a gallery somewhere.
  • (2) Joaquin Rodriguez Oliver is amusing himself by trying to take a puff of a cigar in his saddle.
  • (3) Students have been amused by the amount of public response to this action.
  • (4) But she is determined to reassert her authority and appears not to have been amused by the remark.
  • (5) In La Shish, the beloved local halal restaurant where Wanda Beydoun has worked a minimum wage managing job for 16 years, these stereotypes are a source of amusement.
  • (6) In a tent for those recovering, a talkative man wearing a heavy gold chain played up to amused doctors during the lunch break.
  • (7) Israeli media reports said the rocket came down near an amusement park in sand dunes on the edge of the city.
  • (8) He tells an amusing story of how exhilarated, if stunned, he was by completing three skeleton runs at Lillehammer.
  • (9) Tech entrepreneurs will keep expanding into increasingly diverse niches, so it will be amusing to try and pick out the most obscure market being disrupted in 2014.
  • (10) King notes with some amusement that he has been around so long that kids who read and loved him in the 1970s now run publishing houses and newspapers; he is revered, these days, as a grand old man of American letters.
  • (11) She added that the superstore would have pulled business from the local high street and brought big lorries and heavy traffic to the site which sits next to Dreamland, Margate’s derelict amusement park which is being revived.
  • (12) But my amusement should be a problem for movement conservatism.
  • (13) Facebook Twitter Pinterest We are most amused … The Windsors, starring Harry Enfield and Hadyn Gwynne, centre.
  • (14) In Brussels, the reaction was more bemusement than amusement.
  • (15) It’s something that has always baffled and amused me about my grandmother.
  • (16) It amuses me that he calls his new material "songs" when they are so unsingable.
  • (17) The joke, the uncontainable amusement, the gleeful satisfaction, was that most rational people had thought that he was too disabled to walk 26 miles, that he was too sick.
  • (18) The tribunal ruled: "The comment having been made, other people in the room, including other supervisors, laughing and finding it amusing, was inevitably conduct that any gay police officer would reasonably consider … degrading."
  • (19) "The part in the film is small, I thought it would be amusing.
  • (20) Now tell us this, Robbie, when you collected your MBE from the queen, did you exchange amusing chitchat with the woman who most of us only ever encounter on stamps?

Banter


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To address playful good-natured ridicule to, -- the person addressed, or something pertaining to him, being the subject of the jesting; to rally; as, he bantered me about my credulity.
  • (v. t.) To jest about; to ridicule in speaking of, as some trait, habit, characteristic, and the like.
  • (v. t.) To delude or trick, -- esp. by way of jest.
  • (v. t.) To challenge or defy to a match.
  • (n.) The act of bantering; joking or jesting; humorous or good-humored raillery; pleasantry.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It shows that we still have some way to go to end bigoted banter.” The exchange was also met with disdain on Twitter.
  • (2) The LMA exacerbated the issue on Thursday night with a statement of its own, in which Mackay apologised for sending texts that “were disrespectful to other cultures” but he “was letting off steam to a friend during some friendly text message banter”.
  • (3) The man who cannot hold his own in repartee will even learn other men's jokes off by heart, so that he can fill a void in the general banter.
  • (4) It added: "These were two text messages sent in private at a time Malky felt under great pressure and when he was letting off steam to a friend during some friendly text message banter."
  • (5) From time to time I'd bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was a character but that world was riddled with half-cut, doped-up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn't especially register.
  • (6) While the opening tranche of "tales" derive from the work of forgotten contemporary humorists, the pieces of London reportage that he began to contribute to the Morning Chronicle in autumn 1834 ("Gin Shops", "Shabby-Genteel People", "The Pawnbroker's Shop") are like nothing else in pre-Victorian journalism: bantering and hard-headed by turns, hectic and profuse, falling over themselves to convey every last detail of the metropolitan front-line from which Dickens sent back his dispatches.
  • (7) Lunchtime read: How banter conquered Britain Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Guardian Design Team There are hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, you can eat at restaurants called Scoff & Banter or buy an “Archbishop of Banterbury” T-shirt for £9.99.
  • (8) Jack soon suspected that the cynical comments emanating from behind him belonged to a Manchester City supporter but, typically, enjoyed the banter.
  • (9) It featured – and then featured the end of – a new character, Uncle Steve, and banter between Rick (Roiland) and his detested son-in-law Jerry (Chris Parnell).
  • (10) If the news that Wendi Deng had joined her husband Rupert Murdoch on Twitter and promptly engaged in flirtatious banter with the likes of Ricky Gervais seemed too good to be true, that's because it was.
  • (11) Gordon Brown spoke fluently and even managed some banter with cabinet colleagues.
  • (12) Naseer insisted the emails consisted only of harmless banter about looking for a potential bride after going to England to take computer science classes.
  • (13) But instead of condemning such behaviour as sexist, the Bar Council chairman described it as “banter”.
  • (14) "Banter", for me, is like a spitty wind, one that either breezes past gently, or batters me round the cheeks with its mindless force.
  • (15) I tried to address it and have a bit of bunny-based banter with him: "Why are you wearing a full rabbit costume?"
  • (16) These recordings will include an approximation of the original Smile album, plus outtakes and studio banter.
  • (17) "I've met all my colleagues this week so I've received a little bit of banter from them which has been good natured.
  • (18) We survived for six hours with only scraps of quality banter, three cans of Rockstar and a lukewarm quarter chicken that my mate Karl smuggled in his Superdry man bag.
  • (19) He added that the banter on Top Gear was an "imperfect science" that would "invariably upset some viewers at some point".
  • (20) Is banter the act of whispering "IDon'tFancyYouIDon'tFancyYou" with your eyes?