Jokes

How to spell jokes

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce jokes

What does jokes mean?

1. nounThings said or done to cause amusement or laughter, especially short funny stories or remarks.
2. verbMakes amusing remarks or speaks in a teasing, not serious, way.

Jokes in a sentence

• noun

  His terrible jokes at the office party made everyone groan.

• verb

  He always jokes about his cooking before he serves it.

• noun

  The comedian opened the show with a string of clever jokes.

• verb

  She jokes that her commute is longer than her workday.

Where does jokes come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural and present-tense form of 'joke', which English borrowed in the seventeenth century from the Latin word iocus, meaning a jest, a game played with words, or light fun. The earliest English appearances were often spelled 'joke' or even 'joque', and the word carried a slightly slangy, informal flavour when it first arrived. The same Latin iocus also gave us the more elevated word 'jocular' and the now rare 'jocose', both meaning fond of joking, which is a handy reminder that the silent classical root sits behind the everyday spelling. The 'j' represents the Latin 'i' sound that hardened over centuries into the modern English consonant. The spelling is reliably regular: the trap, if any, is simply remembering that the plural and verb forms add a plain -s with no fuss.

How the word is built

• joke (from Latin iocus: a jest, a game with words)
• -s (plural noun / third-person singular verb ending)