jape

A joke or quip.

[H]e clapped hand to thigh, and laughed and laughed until the air rang again. "Oho, a jape—a jape indeed!" he roared.

“Now I come to think of it, I suppose schooling isn't such a bad idea as long as he can have some japes and tomfoolery with his young cohorts.” “My love, it will be very good for him and very good for us.”

A prank or trick.

In London or New York in the late 1970s dada meant what it meant in Paris and New York at the end of the First World War: a not-quite-naked prank, a jape clothed in the barest g-string of aesthetic authority, a Bronx cheer in three-part harmony, Tzara's affirmation of the right “to piss and shit in different colors.”

To jest; play tricks.

Now the Lond of Egypt longeth to the Soudan, yet the Soudan longeth not to the Lond of Egypt. And when I say this, I do jape with words, and may hap ye understond me not.

To mock; deride.

To have sexual intercourse with.

Nay, brother, lay hand on him soon; / For he japed my wife, and made me cuckold.

I jape a wench […] it is better to jape a wenche than to do worce.