raillery's Usage Examples:

"If you pressed him for an opinion he took refuge in raillery, and threw out some paradox with which it was not easy to cope.

For it was not only against the clergy and the monks that he kept up a ceaseless stream of satiric raillery; he treated nobles, princes and kings with equal freedom.

Various repressive remedies were proposed, but Shaftesbury maintained that fanaticism was best encountered by "raillery" and "good-humour.

Many of her young friends ventured on a little gentle raillery.

It was also used by a class of bards or itinerant soothsayers known by the name of vates, of whom the most famous was one Marcius, and in the "Fescennine verses," as sung at harvest-homes and weddings, which gave expression to the coarse gaiety of the people and to their strong tendency to personal raillery and satiric comment.

"1 "He is too much given to horse-play in his raillery, and comes to battle like a dictator from the plough.

Already antiquated, it could not resist the wit and raillery with which Voltaire, in his Lettres sur les Anglais (1728), brought against it the principles and results of Locke and Newton.

Spenser, in "Colin Clout's come home again," calls him with a spice of raillery "old Palaemon" who "sung so long until quite hoarse he grew.

Synonyms:

backchat, badinage, persiflage, give-and-take, banter, repartee,

Antonyms:

None