(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?
Wry
Definition:
(v. t.) To cover.
(superl.) Turned to one side; twisted; distorted; as, a wry mouth.
(superl.) Hence, deviating from the right direction; misdirected; out of place; as, wry words.
(superl.) Wrested; perverted.
(v. i.) To twist; to writhe; to bend or wind.
(v. i.) To deviate from the right way; to go away or astray; to turn side; to swerve.
(a.) To twist; to distort; to writhe; to wrest; to vex.
Example Sentences:
(1) When I commiserate about the overnight flight that brought them here, Linney gives a wry grimace.
(2) The image was widely shared online and taken as a wry comment on pictures of Donald Trump’s all-male Oval Office team.
(3) Putin could have been forgiven for allowing himself a wry grin, as another court comprehensively trashed Berezovsky's reputation.
(4) No wry observations or whoops-a-daisy trombones to subvert the conceit for period lolz.
(5) She frequently talks about herself as an object of wry or amused discovery.
(6) It was described as the "Twitter revolution" , but almost a year on from Iran's disputed presidential elections, during which the use of social media by the opposition movement made headlines around the world, such claims prompt wry smiles from seasoned observers.
(7) Enigmatic and elusive, they may have named themselves after the US video director because they enjoy his work, or it may be a wry comment on something or other.
(8) Franzen did seem to have a certain sense of humour about himself, and in person has a wry, awkward charm.
(9) Coal plants are the most polluting of all power stations and the World Resources Institute (WRI) identified 1,200 coal plants in planning across 59 countries, with about three-quarters in China and India.
(10) The cover art for the Cranberries' Bury the Hatchet (1999) was an evocation of paranoia – a giant eye bearing down on a crouching figure – that did neither band nor artist many favours; his image for Muse's Black Holes and Revelations (2006) amounted to a thin revival of his work for the Floyd that, if you were being generous, suggested a wry comment on that band's unconvincing attempts to revive the excesses of 1970s progressive rock.
(11) He was a nice man, unpretentious and with a wry manner.
(12) The secretary of state also made a wry comparison between the bipartisan co-operation underpinning the new Afghan government and the polarised state of American domestic politics.
(13) But he is courteous, wry, insightful and very much on the left of his party.
(14) "I think I know what's to come," Chua says with a wry smile.
(15) "I don't think that Plaid Cymru can overturn world capitalism," she says, with a wry smile.
(16) "They were very happy," Wazir recalls with a wry smile.
(17) We are seeing a shift in the expansion of tree cover loss to a second tier of smaller countries that traditionally get much less attention from environmental groups.” He added: “These countries are recovering from years of civil conflicts that have made them off limits to investors who are now looking for opportunities – it is a new frontier of investments.” The WRI analysis suggests that a rapidly growing palm oil industry is one of the biggest contributors to the change.
(18) Guy Shrubsole, at Friends of the Earth, said of the WRI report: "This is a scary number of coal-fired plants being planned.
(19) The WRI report also found that, after a slight dip during the economic troubles of 2008, the global coal trade has rebounded and rose by 13% in 2010.
(20) But he is far from being a show-off: 'In fact, he comes over as a modest individual with a wry sense of humour', says a colleague.