What's the difference between comedy and jest?

Comedy


Definition:

  • (n.) A dramatic composition, or representation of a bright and amusing character, based upon the foibles of individuals, the manners of society, or the ludicrous events or accidents of life; a play in which mirth predominates and the termination of the plot is happy; -- opposed to tragedy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A philosophy student at Sussex University, he was part of an improvised comedy sketch group and one skit required him to beatbox (making complex drum noises with your mouth).
  • (2) Corden, a big star in the UK since he made his name with BBC comedy Gavin and Stacey but still a relative unknown in the US, will succeed Craig Ferguson who will step down from the show after a decade.
  • (3) Gola, who gave his first stand-up turn in 2001, has watched comedy in South Africa go mainstream.
  • (4) In a recent episode of the BBC Radio 4 comedy Alun Cochrane's Fun House , Cochrane joked of how he sleeps better in the living room.
  • (5) Days and Nights in the Forest , which began as a comedy about Calcuttan gents on safari for aboriginal villagers, before shading into something almost too dark for my comprehension.
  • (6) Comic writing can be a brutal, unforgiving business, yet it can produce great and multi-layered prose, combining comedy, pathos and satire.
  • (7) Castin' makes me feel good: Ghostbusters' diverse team is a victory Read more Dan Aykroyd heralds Ghostbusters cast as 'most magnificent women in comedy' Read more “There’s three drafts of the old concept that exists,” said Aykroyd.
  • (8) The first UK comedy show I ever performed was a total mess.
  • (9) I think the heart of good comedy really lives in truth and reacting to the absurdities, hypocrisies, abuses of power in the world.” Late night television is a no longer a glass of warm milk before bed, it’s a lunch buffet And as TV viewership declines and internet virality becomes as important as real-time eyeballs, cable networks might find that topical comedy is a smart, cost-effective way to grab cross-platform attention.
  • (10) Despite his insistence that comedy should be colour-blind, Amos admits black audiences prefer the black circuit, where "you know the material isn't going to be racist or make you feel awkward, where you feel like you belong".
  • (11) That's in 1888; by 1890 the tone is of comic resignation (there is much comedy in these pages) as Edmond realises that he has devoted the whole of his life "to a special sort of literature: the sort that brings one trouble".
  • (12) He's broken limbs, nearly lost fingers and contracted a potentially deadly bone-marrow infection, as well as performing a string of excellent comedy shows retelling his exploits.
  • (13) Charlize Theron is set to star opposite Seth MacFarlane in the Ted creator's new comedy western A Million Ways to Die in the West, tipped as a homage to Mel Brooks's classic movie Blazing Saddles .
  • (14) The series is widely regarded as the first British sitcom, focusing on characters and situations over a single half-hour sketch, rather than stand-up comedy or variety which was then dominant in British radio.
  • (15) "I was at a comedy club trying to do my act, and I got heckled and I took it badly and went into a rage," Richards said.
  • (16) Fines’ best actor nod fell in the comedy movie category, which he shared with Michael Keaton in Birdman, Bill Murray in St. Vincent, Joaquin Phoenix in Inherent Vice and Christoph Waltz in Big Eyes.
  • (17) His first film appearances had included Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Small Back Room, and the comedy Dear Mr Prohack (both 1949), the latter adapted from an Arnold Bennett novel.
  • (18) Between festivals, Hardee played cameo roles in TV comedies such as Blackadder and The Comic Strip, and ran his own comedy club, the Tunnel, which he had opened at the southern end of the Blackwall Tunnel in 1984; it acquired a fearsome reputation as a graveyard for aspiring standups.
  • (19) Archer, which Reed originally pitched to the FX channel as "James Bond meets Arrested Development" takes this premise – the comedy of displacement activity – and runs with it.
  • (20) 23 May More films to see in 2014 • 2014 preview: thrillers • 2014 preview: comedy • 2014 preview: Oscar hopefuls • 2014 preview: science fiction • 2014 preview: romance • 2014 preview: drama • This article was amended on Thursday 2 January 2014.

Jest


Definition:

  • (n.) A deed; an action; a gest.
  • (n.) A mask; a pageant; an interlude.
  • (n.) Something done or said in order to amuse; a joke; a witticism; a jocose or sportive remark or phrase. See Synonyms under Jest, v. i.
  • (v. i.) The object of laughter or sport; a laughingstock.
  • (v. i.) To take part in a merrymaking; -- especially, to act in a mask or interlude.
  • (v. i.) To make merriment by words or actions; to joke; to make light of anything.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Dawn Powell: A Time to Be Born (1942) Joseph Heller: Catch-22 (1961) Kurt Vonnegut: Breakfast of Champions (1973) David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest (1996) The American comedy, generally speaking, is a scatological thing, or a repository of racial prejudice or gender stereotypes.
  • (2) Defining what constitutes merely a jest and what is of a "menacing character" has not been easy for the judges.
  • (3) In Hall’s farewell season of Shakespeare’s late romances in 1988, he led the company alongside Michael Bryant and Eileen Atkins , playing a clenched and possessed Leontes in The Winter’s Tale; an Italianate, jesting Iachimo in Cymbeline; and a gloriously drunken Trinculo in The Tempest (he played Prospero for Adrian Noble at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 2012).
  • (4) The 2010 book was written by Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky, and is what it says on the tin: an account of a road trip with the author as he went across the US promoting his 1,100-page novel Infinite Jest, recalling the conversations the pair have and the fame that Foster Wallace is starting to experience.
  • (5) From Glasgow, Leeds , Bristol and Dublin , to New York , San Diego and Vancouver , to Perth , Melbourne and Sydney , groups of non-believers will be getting together to form their own monthly Sunday Assemblies, with the movement's founders – the standup comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans – visiting the fledgling congregations in what they are calling, only partly in jest, a "global missionary tour".
  • (6) I did not say so, thank God, even in jest, otherwise our encounter could have been even worse than it was.
  • (7) "That was totally in jest," he added, saying he would "tone down my sense of humour until I become president, because America needs to get a sense of humour".
  • (8) Green's husband Wallace, best known for the novel Infinite Jest, committed suicide at home in 2008 , and was found by Green.
  • (9) "F alsehood flies," wrote Jonathan Swift 300 years ago, "and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect."
  • (10) ‘What is truth?” said jesting Pilate – in Bacon’s famous phrase.
  • (11) It was a jibe made in jest by a man who had much fondness for him.
  • (12) In comments that a source said were largely made in jest, Johnson – who is also the Conservative candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip – attacked the former prime minister over his speech in support of Labour’s current leader Ed Miliband.
  • (13) Although this article is presented in jest, I am not above anything that works to get contributions for my newsletter.
  • (14) I saw Brand's Messiah Complex show in London the other week, in which he – in jest, of course – compares himself to Che Guevara, Gandhi, Malcolm X and Christ.
  • (15) He likes winding people up, being controversial for the sake of it and more often than not what he says is in jest.
  • (16) In jest or in earnest, there is a rank hypocrisy here that sits uncomfortably with me.
  • (17) It was planned as the much-anticipated follow-up to Infinite Jest , the teeming 1,000-page bleakly comic masterpiece that had established Wallace, at 34, as the man most likely to redefine the scope and voice of the American novel.
  • (18) One 18th-century classicist is even said to have planned to write a scholarly edition of the best-known joke book of that period, Joe Miller's Jests , in order to show that every single joke in it was descended from the ancient Laughter Lover .
  • (19) Eurozone unlocks €10.3bn bailout loan for Greece Read more I jest of course.
  • (20) A number of edits, apparently made in jest, have been picked up by the automatic twitter bot Congress Edits , which monitors Wikipedia for changes to the site made by accounts with IP addresses coming from inside the US legislature.