Practical thing?

Usage examples of joke.

With their droll sarcasm, high spirits, and practical jokes, Acer and his set took it upon themselves to flatter and tease Jacinda back into her usual good humor.

When he had turned on one of the impudent young bucks with a sudden snarl, Acer had laughed at him for his inability to take a joke.

Joke, the one that must have been handed down from Aching to Aching for hundreds of years.

Barry and I occasionally joked about the faith thing, about his being a True Believer and me the quintessential agnostic, a secular humanist.

She and Lou had fled to a corner of the cafeteria behind the ailing ailanthus, the bad joke of the company.

To be the butt of a joke was nothing compared with the humiliation of not handling the alky, of falling asleep on watch.

I am glad we got the Castilian Amoroso, because it did really cheer Father up, and you cannot always do that, however hard you try, even if you make jokes, or give him a comic paper.

The virtue claimed for that piece of parchment by the man who had sold it to me was that it insured its lucky possessor the love of all women, but I trust my readers will do me the justice to believe that I had no faith whatever in amorous philtres, talismans, or amulets of any kind: I had purchased it only for a joke.

Even raunchy jokes embarrassed him, never mind sleazy amourettes in hotels.

While he was answering with much wit some jokes of the count, I kept looking at him with some anxiety, but he came up to me and embraced me warmly.

Harun al Raschid returned to his very distant land where the populace did indeed enjoy a never-ending series of fart jokes, and Sinbad and Fatima were returned to human form after a most enjoyable apehood, and then were accompanied back to Baghdad by Achmed and his new bride, Marjanah, and all were showered with gifts from that elder Sinbad, who was rich again, at least for the time being, and was much relieved to see them.

The story is of course apocryphal, but it was widely told as a joke and thus perhaps is responsible for the popularity of the phrase.

I was very much astonished to find I had gone so far when I had only intended to joke.

In the lower House were certain bedaubed walls, in the basest style of imitation, which made him feel faintly sick, not to speak of a lobby adorned with artless prints and photographs of eminent defunct Congressmen that was all too serious for a joke and too comic for a Valhalla.

She, who neither meant nor suspected any ill, was quite at her ease, and we should have enjoyed the joke, and everything would have gone on pleasantly, if her husband had possessed some modicum of manners and common sense, but he began to get into a perfect fury of jealousy.