REPARTEE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does repartee mean? 

• REPARTEE (noun)
  The noun REPARTEE has 1 sense:

1. adroitness and cleverness in reply

  Familiarity information: REPARTEE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• REPARTEE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Adroitness and cleverness in reply

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("repartee" is a kind of...):

humor; humour; wit; witticism; wittiness (a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "repartee"):

backchat; banter; give-and-take; raillery (light teasing repartee)

 Context examples 

I am a very matter-of-fact, plain-spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without striking it out.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Mr. Rochester, allow me to disown my first answer: I intended no pointed repartee: it was only a blunder.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London could earn £ 700 a year—which is less than my average takings—but I had exceptional advantages in my power of making up, and also in a facility of repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a recognised character in the City.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Nothing angered and mortified me so much as the queen’s dwarf; who being of the lowest stature that was ever in that country (for I verily think he was not full thirty feet high), became so insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger and look big as he passed by me in the queen’s antechamber, while I was standing on some table talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against which I could only revenge myself by calling him brother, challenging him to wrestle, and such repartees as are usually in the mouths of court pages.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I'll keep you from the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real mutual advantage.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)