What's the difference between jest and laugh?

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.

Laugh


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To show mirth, satisfaction, or derision, by peculiar movement of the muscles of the face, particularly of the mouth, causing a lighting up of the face and eyes, and usually accompanied by the emission of explosive or chuckling sounds from the chest and throat; to indulge in laughter.
  • (v. i.) Fig.: To be or appear gay, cheerful, pleasant, mirthful, lively, or brilliant; to sparkle; to sport.
  • (v. t.) To affect or influence by means of laughter or ridicule.
  • (v. t.) To express by, or utter with, laughter; -- with out.
  • (n.) An expression of mirth peculiar to the human species; the sound heard in laughing; laughter. See Laugh, v. i.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Perhaps they can laugh it all off more easily, but only to the extent that the show doesn’t instill terror for how this country’s greatness will be inflicted on them next.
  • (2) Unlikely, he laughs: "We were founded on the idea of distributing information as far as possible."
  • (3) If this is what 70s stoners were laughing at, it feels like they’ve already become acquiescent, passive parts of media-relayed consumer society; precursors of the cathode-ray-frazzled pop-culture exegetists of Tarantino and Kevin Smith in the 90s.
  • (4) He shrugs his shoulders and laughs: "And they call us thieves!"
  • (5) It’s useless if we try and fight with them through force, so we try and fight with them through humour.” “There is a saying that laughing is the best form of medicine.
  • (6) During well-coordinated neurological and psychiatric treatment the laughing seizures (spontaneous, event-related, psychogenic) decreased and a considerable improvement in psychiatric and psychosocial problems was attained.
  • (7) Keepy-uppys should be a simple skill for a professional footballer, so when Tom Ince clocked himself in the face with the ball while preparing to take a corner early in the second half, even he couldn't help but laugh.
  • (8) Having long been accustomed to being the butt of other politicians' jokes, however, Farage is relishing what may yet become the last laugh.
  • (9) "I rang my wife to tell her," he says, "and she just laughed."
  • (10) Best friends since school, they sound like an old married couple, finishing each other's sentences, constantly referring to the other by name and making each other laugh; deep sonorous, belly laughs.
  • (11) Fields said: "The assertions that Tom Cruise likened making a movie to being at war in Afghanistan is a gross distortion of the record... What Tom said, laughingly, was that sometimes, 'That's what it feels like.'"
  • (12) I present this to Rudd, who laughs and asks if there was any overlap between those who wanted sex and those who wanted to start filming.
  • (13) He made me laugh and cry, and his courage in writing about what he was going through was sometimes quite overwhelming.
  • (14) I think the “horror and outrage” Roberts complains of were more like hilarity, and the story still makes me laugh (as do many others on Mumsnet, which is full of jokes as well as acronyms for everything).
  • (15) Patients with bilateral forebrain disease may commonly manifest the syndrome of pathologic laughing and weeping.
  • (16) She could still really make us laugh,” her mother says.
  • (17) He laughs: "I've had a few guys buck up against me, but that's all right because some of us enjoy the bucking."
  • (18) Intricate is the key word, as screwball dialogue plays off layered wordplay, recurring jokes and referential callbacks to build to the sort of laughs that hit you twice: an initial belly laugh followed, a few minutes later, by the crafty laugh of recognition.
  • (19) Harry Kane laughs off one-season wonder tag after Alan Shearer pep talk Read more “He is a great role model.
  • (20) "Everyone calls him the Socialist Worker Padre," one bland senior cleric told me with a sly and dismissive laugh.