Word.ws English Dictionary

droll

/dɹɒl//dɹəʊl/

droll adjective: oddly humorous; whimsical, amusing in a quaint way; waggish.

Adjective

droll (comparative droller, superlative drollest)

  1. Oddly humorous; whimsical, amusing in a quaint way; waggish.
    • Very droll, minister.
    • The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionetti—a famous company from Milan—is, without any exception, the drollest exhibition I ever beheld in my life. I never saw anything so exquisitely ridiculous.1846, Charles Dickens, “Genoa and Its Neighbourhood”, in Pictures from Italy, London: […] Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC, page 68

Noun (1)

droll (plural drolls)

  1. (archaic) A funny person; a buffoon, a wag.
    • The lieutenant was a droll in his way, Peregrine possessed a great fund of sprightliness and good humour, and Godfrey, among his other qualifications already recited, sung a most excellent song […].1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC
    • Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned pennies.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 12: The Cyclops]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 294

Verb

droll (third-person singular simple present drolls, present participle drolling, simple past and past participle drolled)

  1. (archaic, intransitive) To jest, to joke.
    • "Eh, man," said I, drolling with him a little, "you're very ingenious! But would it not be simpler for you to write him a few words in black and white?" / "And that is an excellent observe, Mr. Balfour of Shaws," says Alan, drolling with me; [...]1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Flight in the Heather: The Heugh of Corrynakeigh”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London...

Noun (2)

droll (plural drolls)

  1. (Gullah folklore) The ghost of a child, especially one who died a painful death.
    • HAMILTON’S HILL, 0.4 m., a little elevation, was the starting point for the races, and is known for a wide variety of ghosts including such fearsome creatures as a 10-foot cat that explodes before the beholder’s eyes, plat-eyes in the guise of three-legged hogs and two-headed cows, boo-daddies...1938, The Ocean Highway: New Brunswick, New Jersey to Jacksonville, Florida, page 204
    • Drolls are spirits of young children who died a painful death. They can be heard, the Negroes say, crying piteously at night in deep swamps and deserted marshland.1941, South Carolina Folk Tales: Stories of Animals and Supernatural Beings, page 48

Proper noun capitalized: Droll

Droll (plural Drolls)

  1. A surname from German.

droll meaning in Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada and Punjabi

droll in Urdu

droll
عجب 'ajab

droll in Malayalam

humorous, funny, amusing
വിനോദകരമായ, ചിരിപ്പിക്കുന്ന, ഹാസ്യജനകം, ചിരിയുണ്ടാക്കുന്ന, വിനോദംനിറഞ്ഞ, രസകരമായ

droll in Kannada

ವಿನೋದಕರ, ತಮಾಷೆಯ, ಹಾಸ್ಯಕರ, ವಿಲಕ್ಷಣ

droll in Punjabi

droll
ਅਜਬ ajab

Examples of droll in a sentence

  • The drolls are supposed to be the spirits of infants who died painful deaths.1938, The Ocean Highway: New Brunswick, New Jersey to Jacksonville, Florida, page 204:
  • I have heard them sing the songs of their forefathers and tell of Drolls, Boo Daddies, Plat Eyes, and other terrible spirits who came back on this earth at certain times to plague the lives of men.1955, Nell S. Graydon, Tales of Edisto:
  • And whenever we heard the droll shrieking from down toward Drunken Jack Island they told us the story of Crab Boy.2013, Lynn Michelsohn, Crab Boy’s Ghost: Gullah Folktales from Murrells Inlet’s Brookgreen Gardens in the South Carolina Lowcountry, →ISBN:

All 13 example sentences with droll

Synonyms of droll

4 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of droll

Forms of droll

Adjective
comparativedroller
superlativedrollest
Noun
pluraldrolls
Verb
third-person singular presentdrolls
present participledrolling
past participledrolled
pastdrolled
Proper noun
pluralDrolls

Origin of droll

From French drôle (“comical, odd, funny”), from drôle (“buffoon”) from Middle French drolle (“a merry fellow, pleasant rascal”) from Old French drolle (“one who lives luxuriously”), from Middle Dutch drol (“fat little man, goblin”), itself from Old Norse troll, from Proto-Germanic *truzlą. Doublet of drôle and troll.

Borrowed from German Droll.

Words formed from droll

Words that rhyme with droll

47 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about droll

What does droll mean?
Droll means oddly humorous; whimsical, amusing in a quaint way; waggish.
What is droll in Urdu?
Droll in Urdu is عجب ('ajab). See Droll meaning in Urdu.
How do you use droll in a sentence?
The drolls are supposed to be the spirits of infants who died painful deaths.
What part of speech is droll?
Droll can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce droll?
Droll is pronounced /dɹəʊl/ (UK).

Words near droll in the dictionary

  1. droler
  2. drolerie
  3. drolest
  4. Drolet
  5. Drolets
  6. droll
  7. drolled
  8. droller
  9. drolleries
  10. drollers
  11. drollery

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: droll (page history and authors); Droll (page history and authors); عجب (Urdu) (page history and authors); droll (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); droll (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਅਜਬ (Punjabi) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-droll.wav.

Cite this entry: “droll.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/droll. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.