Other forms: jokers
A joker is somebody who is always making jokes, or the odd card. The office joker, play the joker, a wild joker.
The card is a nineteenth-century American addition to the pack, made for the game euchre, and most games ignore it. Applied to a person the word is affectionate or dismissive depending on tone — some joker has left the door open. Note joke, from the Latin iocus, a jest.
1nounjokerSomebody who is always making jokes.
“Tom is the joker of the class and always makes everyone laugh.”
2nounextraThe extra card in a pack.
“In this card game, the joker can stand for any other card.”
joker is a jester, or a card.
Joke plus -er. The playing card may come from Juckerspiel, the German name for euchre, and euchre comes from the same word.
Proto-Indo-European
*yek-
Proto-Indo-European
*yokos — word, utterance
Proto-Italic
*jokos — word, (playful?) saying
Latin
iocus — joke, jest, pastime
English
joke
English, today
joker
From joke + -er, but in the sense of a playing card possibly by alteration of Jucker, also the origin of the name of the card game a doublet of euchre. joke comes from Latin iocus (“joke, jest, pastime”), from Proto-Italic jokos (“word, (playful?) saying”), from Proto-Indo-European yokos (“word, utterance”), from ultimate root Proto-Indo-European yek- (“to speak, utter”) (of which distant cognates include Proto-Celtic yextis (“language”) (Breton yezh (“language”) and Welsh iaith (“language”)) and German Beichte (“confession”)). Cognate with French jeu, Italian gioco, Portuguese jogo, Spanish juego, Romanian joc, English Yule, Danish Jule, Norwegian Bokmål Jul, Swedish Jul, and Norwegian Nynorsk jol.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA