joke vs joke around

joke

verb
  • To do or say something for amusement rather than seriously. 

  • To dupe in a friendly manner for amusement; to mess with, play with. 

noun
  • An amusing story. 

  • The root cause or main issue, especially an unexpected one 

  • A laughably worthless thing or person; a sham. 

  • Something that is far easier or far less challenging than expected. 

  • Something said or done for amusement, not in seriousness. 

joke around

verb
  • To say something that is not meant to be taken seriously. 

  • To kid, prank, joke. 

  • (procrastinate, fool around, behave immaturely): bowdlerization of fuck around 

How often have the words joke and joke around occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )