Jester

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Jester \Jest"er\, n. [Cf. {Gestour}.]
     1. A buffoon; a merry-andrew; a court fool.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              This . . . was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.
                                                    --Shak.


        [1913 Webster]
  
              Dressed in the motley garb that jesters wear.
                                                    --Longfellow.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. A person addicted to jesting, or to indulgence in light
        and amusing talk.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              He ambled up and down
              With shallow jesters.                 --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  jester
       n : a professional clown employed to entertain a king or
           nobleman in the middle ages [syn: {fool}, {motley fool}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  53 Moby Thesaurus words for "jester":
     Columbine, Hanswurst, Harlequin, Pantalone, Pantaloon,
     Polichinelle, Pulcinella, Punch, Punchinello, Scaramouch, banana,
     buffo, buffoon, burlesquer, caricaturist, clown, comedian, comic,
     cutup, droll, epigrammatist, fool, funnyman, gag writer, gagman,
     gagster, harlequin, humorist, idiot, ironist, jack-pudding, joker,
     jokesmith, jokester, lampooner, madcap, merry-andrew, motley,
     motley fool, parodist, pickle-herring, prankster, punner, punster,
     quipster, reparteeist, satirist, wag, wagwit, wisecracker, wit,
     witling, zany
  
  

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:

  JESTER, n.  An officer formerly attached to a king's household, whose
  business it was to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and
  utterances, the absurdity being attested by his motley costume.  The
  king himself being attired with dignity, it took the world some
  centuries to discover that his own conduct and decrees were
  sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of
  all mankind.  The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and
  romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise
  and witty person.  In the circus of to-day the melancholy ghost of the
  court fool effects the dejection of humbler audiences with the same
  jests wherewith in life he gloomed the marble hall, panged the
  patrician sense of humor and tapped the tank of royal tears.
  
      The widow-queen of Portugal
          Had an audacious jester
      Who entered the confessional
          Disguised, and there confessed her.
  
      "Father," she said, "thine ear bend down --
          My sins are more than scarlet:
      I love my fool -- blaspheming clown,
          And common, base-born varlet."
  
      "Daughter," the mimic priest replied,
          "That sin, indeed, is awful:
      The church's pardon is denied
          To love that is unlawful.
  
      "But since thy stubborn heart will be
          For him forever pleading,
      Thou'dst better make him, by decree,
          A man of birth and breeding."
  
      She made the fool a duke, in hope
          With Heaven's taboo to palter;
      Then told a priest, who told the Pope,
          Who damned her from the altar!
                                                              Barel Dort