What's the difference between facetious and jocular?

Facetious


Definition:

  • (a.) Given to wit and good humor; merry; sportive; jocular; as, a facetious companion.
  • (a.) Characterized by wit and pleasantry; exciting laughter; as, a facetious story or reply.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This, in turn, prompted an apology from the director, along with a (possibly facetious) denial that he was "a Nazi".
  • (2) He is very facetious and constantly observing the crowd… His character is very spontaneous, which I am but, at the same time, when I prepare a spectacle, I leave nothing to chance, I am very methodical.
  • (3) There are side-effects associated with inhaled steroids, which are the most commonly prescribed preventative treatment, but if standard doses are used these are usually mild.” For his part, Bush admitted his language may have been “facetious”.
  • (4) I obviously missed the point if they were horrified – it was funny and a little facetious."
  • (5) The tweet was "obviously facetious" and "a parody", he added.
  • (6) It was the first time that the men's and women's game had unified and instead we are talking about someone who we paid to come in as entertainment and be facetious about something we stand vehemently against so I apologise for that.
  • (7) "He looks permanently pink and facetious, as though life is one big public-school prank," writes the former Labour MP Chris Mullin, usually quite forgiving towards Tories, in his diaries for December 2010.
  • (8) Numerous articles have appeared in the English literature, but we have been able to find only two editorials in semi-facetious vein in the South African Medical Journal over the last 20 years.
  • (9) Heard’s barrister, Paula Morreau, said: “Obviously it’s foreshadowed and they wanted to attempt to … ” before White interjected to say she was “just being facetious”.
  • (10) Wodehouse was what Orwell called "a political innocent", someone whose essential stupidity about politics - "his mild facetiousness covering an unthinking acceptance [of the world he inhabited]" - rescued him from the charge of the worst sorts of hypocrisy.
  • (11) Sometimes …) If we follow the form, naturally there'll be the ritual feast, the haggis piped in, addressed, sacrificed and served, the traditional speeches, the Address to the Lassies, the Reply, the Immortal Memory, which is supposed to skip the facetiousness and meditate on some aspect of the poet's life and his work.
  • (12) Asked about the claim by the former Liberal MP Lord Alton that he had "facetiously" said Smith's behaviour was no different to conduct at public schools, Steel said: "You say it is a facetious remark.
  • (13) The facetiousness couldn't obscure the truism: five months after Chua's piece, Time magazine published an article titled " Why do we fear a rising China ?"
  • (14) (Parody and doggerel and facetiousness are big features of Burns suppers.
  • (15) "We have a very facetious Liverpool sense of humour, laughing at things which are stupid," says Wells.
  • (16) You can ask a facetious question too – just be sure to keep it respectful.
  • (17) When I say “know-nothing,” I’m not being facetious or hyperbolic.
  • (18) Twain understood publicity so well that he was merely amused when Huck Finn was banned by libraries across the US; when it was banned in Omaha, Nebraska, for example, he sent a telegram to the local newspaper, observing facetiously: "I am tearfully afraid this noise is doing much harm.
  • (19) A facetious comparison, maybe, but shouldn’t home crowds give Scottish comics an advantage?
  • (20) He said: “If the last few weeks tell us anything: it is rarely a help to mention Hitler in support of an argument by an ex-mayor of London.” Paddy Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader, said Johnson was “yet another tuppenny tin-pot imitation Churchill promising to ‘fight them on the beaches’ while weakening our defences and wrecking our economy.” Owen Smith, a Labour shadow cabinet minister, said Johnson was “a cut-rate Donald Trump.” “It’s a ridiculous and facetious comment by a man who is apt to make ridiculous and facetious comments,” Smith told LBC.

Jocular


Definition:

  • (a.) Given to jesting; jocose; as, a jocular person.
  • (a.) Sportive; merry.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As the contest meandered and the stadium went close to quiet there was a jocular moment when Pardew hopped in irritation at a United challenge and the manager dropped his ever-present notebook on the pitch.
  • (2) The tone was jocular, but the intent deadly serious, as becomes clear talking to Jón and Einar Örn Benediktsson, who used to sing alongside Björk in the Sugarcubes and is now Reykjavik's head of culture and tourism.
  • (3) You kindly suggested that it would be helpful if I put them in writing – despite the Freedom of Information Act!” A jocular reference?
  • (4) Welby, who was enthroned as a bishop last November, presented a jocular, relaxed face to the press as he appeared for the first time at Lambeth Palace, surrounded by the portraits of archbishops past.
  • (5) At this time I can’t say anything about transfers,” he said before turning jocular.
  • (6) The cast of The Five vacillated between feigned solemnity and jocular NFL pregame oafishness.
  • (7) Until now, the answer would have been for Network Rail to simply borrow: its spending on the never-never has largely escaped public attention, despite the industry jocularly speaking of the "Network Rail credit card".
  • (8) Alito was not amused by Kagan’s jocular stand for precedent, and declared the original Brulotte “a bald act of policymaking”.
  • (9) The tone was jocular, but the president’s words on Friday betrayed mounting frustration with opponents in his own party who could derail perhaps the biggest domestic policy goal of his last two years in office.
  • (10) The auteur that's matched Malick for headlines this year, Lars von Trier, banned by the festival's board of directors after mounting a jocular defence of Adolf Hitler in an official press conference, was given a consolation prize of sorts when Kirsten Dunst picked up the award for best actress for her part in Melancholia.
  • (11) Poroshenko’s treatment in Washington will also invite comparison to Trump’s warm and jocular Oval Office meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, on May 10, the day after firing the FBI director, James Comey.
  • (12) An overjoyed Mark Sampson was in jocular mood after his England side reached a significant milestone in their history, posting their first knockout stage victory in any World Cup finals with a 2-1 win over Norway in Ottawa.
  • (13) Catch it on one of the 300-odd UK screens it opened across yesterday, and witness a jocular salute to the redemptive power of youth, rebellion and getting fucked-up.
  • (14) Although schizoaffective manic patients resembled manics in their tendency to show combinatory thinking, their productions lacked the jocularity of the manics.
  • (15) It all sounds too easy, a bit jocular, there's more assertion than proof.
  • (16) Derived from The Wizard of Oz , the term "friend of Dorothy" (or FOD) was for many years a carefully guarded euphemism in homosexual circles, until in the 1980s it began to be used openly and jocularly.
  • (17) Last summer he described his development as a writer in a typically jocular column for the Guardian Review book club, which featured the first of his Culture novels, Use of Weapons.
  • (18) Trust in John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, has not been bolstered by jocular remarks envisaging the BBC’s demise as “a tempting prospect” .
  • (19) Corbyn will face May at prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons for the first time on Wednesday, and said he expected it to be a less jocular affair than under David Cameron.
  • (20) Indeed in the course of a single phone call he would veer alarmingly from bonhomie, to bullying, to pleading and then back to a jocular mood.