If you jest, you tell jokes or say amusing things. He enjoyed drinking and jesting with his cronies = joke. something you say that is intended to be funny, not serious = joke (geste , from gesta (plural), from gerere ). to say things that you do not really mean in order to amuse people
a humorous anecdote or remark intended to provoke laughter; "he told a very funny joke"; "he knows a million gags"; "thanks for the laugh"; "he laughed unpleasantly at hisown jest"; "even a schoolboy's jape is supposed to have some ascertainable point"