(superl.) Queer, and fitted to provoke laughter; ludicrous from oddity; amusing and strange.
(n.) One whose practice it is to raise mirth by odd tricks; a jester; a buffoon; a merry-andrew.
(n.) Something exhibited to raise mirth or sport, as a puppet, a farce, and the like.
(v. i.) To jest; to play the buffoon.
(v. t.) To lead or influence by jest or trick; to banter or jest; to cajole.
(v. t.) To make a jest of; to set in a comical light.
Example Sentences:
(1) "It's like revisiting an old world," says Topley-Bird, who is droll and spacey where Tricky is hyperactively chatty.
(2) Obama's roommates were Paul Carpenter, a blond southern Californian who occasionally took his friends surfing (bodysurfing, in Barry's case), and Imad Husain, an intellectual Pakistani with a droll sense of humour who grew up in Karachi (though his parents now lived in Dubai) and finished his secondary education at Bedford School in the UK.
(3) She is by far the most popular …" Ms Harman was careful not to smile at this gallant jibe, but most of the shadow cabinet thought it very droll and smiled happily.
(4) Patterson says that she felt the most sympathy for her father, quietly droll, music-loving, a former Japanese POW.
(5) Tom was unsuited to the home-improvement periodicals for which he wrote in the late 70s, but in 1980 his droll and quizzical reviews began to appear in New Music News, an underground rock weekly launched by Felix Dennis to fill the vacuum left by the strike-bound NME and Melody Maker.
(6) She is the drama's underdog, but Lindqvist's droll, bullish performance elicits the most memorable moments of humour and pathos (as well as several uncomfortable moments in that bikini).
(7) His show was loose and disconnected, delivered in a droll, semi-stoned style that allowed him to ramble gently from one topic to the next.
(8) Here he reviews games with droll and super-fast wit, against a backdrop of animation.
(9) What happened to the droll and down-to-earth candidate who, without a qualm, is now embracing the Bonapartist style of Charles de Gaulle's presidency?
(11) "He was like, 'I've thrown parents in the pool before, don't make me throw you,'" says Tony, adopting a hangdog look and mimicking Murray in the lowest, most droll voice possible.
(12) Most of all, I will miss his style: his suave deportment; his droll sense of humour; his understatement and his physical energy; his articulacy; his charm; his grace.
(13) It's been significantly updated – the stand-out moment for me was when Beryl and Betty did a rap over Don't Stop Me Now (they do the words – "I'm a sex machine, ready to reload", which is droll for their dry delivery – but they also chat all the way through: "I think you were out of tune, there".
(14) In a presentation so droll that the people who came after him kicked off with "We're not going to be as enjoyable as that, I'm afraid", Haslam emphasised activity, more activity, sustainable activity – best of all, routine activity, that is built into your life and carries on regardless of the weather, or whether you've broken your arm.
(15) 1 Know thine enemy It is droll to observe nutritional advice at the public health level; governments and their agencies always approach obesity as though it were a problem of information or – in the popular phrasing – "awareness".
(16) Friday's launch was fun (cue Zuckerberg's droll status update: "Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on Nasdaq") but there's a tendency to see stock market flotations as the culmination of a company's existence.
(17) Every morning, he announces the location of each piece on his website and invites people to call a hotline for droll descriptions of the artwork's inspiration.
(18) Tristram is quite droll about the demands of the narrative, and describes the distance it puts between her and the disease as a kind of relief.
(19) His LinkedIn account is also testament to a droll sense of humour with a minimal CV.
(20) All very droll – but perhaps the self-proclaimed "cock of the walk" might like to think about letting the dust settle?
Drollery
Definition:
(n.) The quality of being droll; sportive tricks; buffoonery; droll stories; comical gestures or manners.
(n.) Something which serves to raise mirth
(n.) A puppet show; also, a puppet.
(n.) A lively or comic picture.
Example Sentences:
(1) The Montage?” I said, dangerously tempted towards Brit drollery.
(2) There’s the sense that Depp is rolling out a shtick rather than a performance, taking the mannerisms born in Edward Scissorhands and nurtured in Sparrow – bird-like surprise, high-octane drollery – and letting them do the heavy lifting.
(3) He's a very English combination of self-effacement, drollery and dogmatism – a listed rectory in a suit and blue tie (unlike his more artistic brother, this paper's architecture critic, Rowan Moore).