Word.ws English Dictionary

jesting

/ˈd͡ʒɛstɪŋ/

jesting noun: joking. Also the present participle and gerund of jest.

Noun

jesting (countable and uncountable, plural jestings)

  1. joking
    • Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings, / Her faith, her oaths, her tears and all were jestings.1599, “(please specify the chapter or poem)”, in The Passionate Pilgrime. […], 2nd edition, London: […] [Thomas Judson] for W[illiam] Iaggard, and are to be sold by W[illiam] Leake, […], →OCLC
    • What an extraordinary mental delusion jesting is; that sort of laboured vivacity which fancies it is pointed when it is only personal; and more extraordinary still, it is always the resource of stupid people.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 151
  2. bantering; ridicule
  3. mocking

Adjective

jesting (comparative more jesting, superlative most jesting)

  1. facetious
  2. humorous
    • He will find that these are no jesting matters.1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XV, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and...
  3. playful; mocking
  4. jeering

Also used as

jesting is also the present participle and gerund of jest.

Forms of jesting

Noun
pluraljestings
Adjective
comparativemore jesting
superlativemost jesting

Words formed from jesting

Words that rhyme with jesting

Questions about jesting

What does jesting mean?
Jesting means joking.
What part of speech is jesting?
Jesting can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce jesting?
Jesting is pronounced /ˈd͡ʒɛstɪŋ/.
What is the plural of jesting?
The plural of jesting is jestings.

Words near jesting in the dictionary

  1. jestful
  2. jestfully
  3. jestfulness
  4. Jestice
  5. Jestices
  6. jesting
  7. jesting-stock
  8. jesting-stocks
  9. jestingly
  10. jestingness
  11. jestings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jesting (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-jestig.wav.

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