Green’s Dictionary of Slang

banter n.1

[cited by B.E. c.1700, the term was one of those, along with bamboozle, mob, kidney and country put, attacked by Swift in Tatler No.230 in 1710 and inspired his proposals to reform the language; despite his condemnation of the term as ‘first borrowed from the bullies in White Friars, then fell among the footmen’ and as an ‘Alsatia phrase’, it had joined SE by 1800]

good-humoured nonsense or teasing.

Show quotations
[UK]M. Pix Innocent Mistress IV ii: Do you take me for a cully, spawn of Hell? Have I known this damned town so long at last to be catched with such gross banter?
[UK]B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Banter, a pleasant way of prating, which seems in earnest, but is in jest.
Church Eng. Loyalty n.p.: ’Tis such a jest, such a banter, to say, we did take up Arms, but we did kill him; Bless us, kill our King, we wou’d not have hurt a Hair on his Head [F&H].
[UK]Swift Tale of a Tub 18: The second instance to shew the author’s wit is not his own, is Peter’s banter (as he calls it in his alsatia phrase) upon transubstantiation.
R. Wodrow Correspondence II 659: Such plain raillery, that unless I should learn banter and Billingsgate, which I still thought below a historian, there is no answering it [F&H].