jeu d'esprit

One of our poets, in a very clever jeu d'esprit, spoke of Mr. Browning as 'thinking in Greek.'

For a jeu d'esprit of that kind it is too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article than as a volume.

Then turn from the shadow of that scene to the shimmer of the one that follows immediately, full of smartness and jeu d'esprit.

It was a mere jeu d'esprit, a specimen of his humorous journalism, elaborated from the St James's Gazette.

Buckland, I think, once indulged in the jeu d'esprit of supposing an ichthyosaur lecturing on the human skull.