[See prec.]
1. trans. To make fun of (a person); to hold up to ridicule, ‘roast’; to jest at, rally, ‘chaff.’ Now usually of good-humored raillery.
1676. D’Urfey, Mad. Fickle, V. i. (1677), 50. Banter him, banter him, Toby. ’Tis a conceited old Scarab, and will yield us excellent sport.
1741. Richardson, Pamela (1824), I. 112. You delight to banter your poor servant, said I.
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav., I. 91. Hag-ridden by my own fancy all night, and then bantered on my haggard looks the next day.
1865. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., IX. XX. vi. 116. Poor Quintus was bantered about it, all his life after, by this merciless King.
† 2. To ridicule, make a jest of (a thing). Obs.
1704. W. S. Perry, Hist. Coll. Amer. Col. Ch., I. 180. Turns his Pulpit to a Stage, And banters reformation.
1754. Chatham, Lett. Nephew, iv. 24. If they banter your regularity, order, and love of study, banter in return their neglect of them.
3. To impose upon (a person), originally in jest; to delude, cheat, trick, bamboozle. arch.
a. 1688. Villiers (Dk. Buckhm.), Confer. (1775), 174. ’Tis impossible, that all my senses should be banter’d and cheated.
1710. Select. Harl. Misc. (1793), 561. There was no bantering the commissioners named in the bill, because they knew them to be men of sense, honour, and courage.
1722. De Foe, Moll Fl. (1840), 60. We diverted ourselves with bantering several poor scholars, with hopes of being at least his lordship’s chaplain.
1815. Scott, Guy M., li. Somebody had been bantering him with an imposition.
4. To banter out of: to do out of by banter.
1687. T. Brown, Saints in Uproar, Wks. 1730, I. 74. To banter folks out of their senses.
1721. Amherst, Terræ Fil., xxxvii. 195. We will not be banter’d out of it by false parallels.
5. absol. or intr. (in prec. senses.)
1688. Shadwell, Sqr. Alsatia, I. i. 15. He shall cut a sham, or banter with the best wit or poet of em all.
1707. Farquhar, Beaux’ Strat., V. iii. 63. He fights, loves, and banters, all in a Breath.
1865. Grote, Plato, I. vii. 291. His … homely vein of illustration seemed to favour the supposition that he was bantering.
6. (in U.S.) To challenge, defy, to a race, match, etc.
1860. in Bartlett, Dict. Amer.
