persiflate

• persifflate

Borrowed from French persifler, persiffler, or formed from persiflage +‎ -ate (verb-forming suffix).^[1][2] Coined by British novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in 1850 (see quotation below).

persiflate (third-person singular simple present persiflates, present participle persiflating, simple past and past participle persiflated)

1. (intransitive, transitive, rare) To engage in persiflage; to banter.
   • 1850 August 21, William Makepeace Thackeray, edited by Gordon N Ray, The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, volume IV, Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, published 1946, page 425:

     We talked and persifflated all the way to London; and the idea of her will help me to a good chapter, in which I will make Pendennis and Blanche play at being in love, such a wicked false humbugging love, as two blase London People might act, and half deceive themselves that they were in earnest.

   • 1961, Richard Usborne, Wodehouse at Work to the End, London: Barrie & Jenkins, published 1976, →ISBN, page 81:

     In later school stories you get Marriott and Jimmy Silver putting their feet up and simply persiflating.

   • 1962, Leo Balet, Rembrandt and Spinoza, New York, N.Y.: Philosophical Library, page 174:

     We shall later see, that he used the Bible (Samson series) for his fight against his Philistine in-laws, and, according to Coppier, to persiflate Rabbi Saul Levi Mortiera, who had cursed Spinoza out of the temple.

• The term is much rarer than persiflage.