He terms the rebel's announcement a joke as they are on the verge of being totally defeated.

VOA: standard.2009.04.26

And somebody as a joke once asked her, "How do you feel living in this village after all these years?"

有个人开玩笑问她,"你在我们村住这么多年觉得怎么样"

耶鲁公开课 - 1871年后的法国课程节选

So, by the way, I don't mean this as a joke, in some sense there's always a third candidate and that comes from the problem we had earlier, because not voting is always an option.

顺便说一句,我不认为某种程度上说,是有三个选举人是一个笑话,这是由于一些由来已久的问题造成的,因为不投票也是一种选择

耶鲁公开课 - 博弈论课程节选

That it is intended as a kind of joke to, in many ways, discredit the idea of the just city or at least to indicate its extreme implausibility.

目的是要用作戏谑，在很多方面，使人怀疑正义之城的概念,或至少是要指明其极难令人置信。

耶鲁公开课 - 政治哲学导论课程节选

So, even if we were to agree with the pessimists that it would be better never to have been born at all, as the old joke goes, show me one person in a thousand who's so lucky, right?

所以，即使我们要同意悲观主义者的观点,根本不出生更好，就像老笑话讲的那样，给我千里挑一找到一个走运的人？

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选

So there is this story about his Uncle Hoskins who takes his horse and cart with Richard in the back and drives it into the middle of the Mississippi River as a kind of practical joke on Richard.

有个故事是关于他的叔叔Hoskins的,他让理查坐在他的马车后,却连人带车掉到密西西比河里,这被作为了一个理查的真实笑话。

耶鲁公开课 - 1945年后的美国小说课程节选