A PRANK is a mischievous, playful trick or joke intended to be funny without causing real harm or damage. For example, one year our Senior Class played a PRANK by filling the Vice-Principal’s office with helium balloons. The VP joined everyone in enjoying the humorous but innocuous senior prank.
I was very surprised to learn that PRANK was an answer to a recent vocabulary in context question. SAT test writers rarely if ever write humorous passages. Although it wasn’t particularly humorous, the passage did describe how mischievous users of Wikipedia sometime play PRANKS by posting fictitious entries.
Believe it or not, PRANK has now appeared on two different tests and is thus a member or our list of Double Trouble words!
PRANK – a mischievous, playful trick or joke intended to be funny without causing real harm or damage