conceit

In laughing, there ever procedeth a conceit of somewhat ridiculous.

a man of quick conceit

His wit's as thick as Tewksbury mustard; there is no more conceit in him than is in a mallet.

By him that me boughte, than quod Dysdayne, / I wonder sore he is in suche cenceyte.

On his way to the gibbet, a freak took him in the head to go off with a conceit.

The “cyberspace” conceit allows him to dramatize computer hacking in nontechnical language, although I wonder how much his somewhat florid descriptions of the “bodiless exultation of cyberspace” will mean to readers who have not experienced the illusion of power that punching the keyboard of even a dinky little word-processor can give.

Plum'd with conceit he calls aloud.

And yet I know not how conceit may rob the treasury of life when life itself yields to the theft;