perrīdiculē

 

Etymology

From perrīdiculus (“very ridiculous”).

Adverb

perrīdiculē (comparative perrīdiculius, superlative perrīdiculissimē)

1. ridiculously, hilariously

one-liner

 

A one-liner is a joke that is delivered in a single line. A good one-liner is said to be pithy – concise and meaningful. Comedians and actors use this comedic method as part of their act, e.g. Jimmy Carr, Tommy Cooper, Rodney Dangerfield, Norm Macdonald, Ken Dodd, Stewart Francis, Zach Galifianakis, Mitch Hedberg, Anthony Jeselnik, Milton Jones, Shaparak Khorsandi, Jay London, Mark Linn-Baker, Demetri Martin, Groucho Marx, Gary Delaney, Emo Philips, Tim Vine, Steven Wright, Gilbert Gottfried, Mike Bocchetti, and Henny Youngman.

Many fictional characters are also known to deliver one-liners, including James Bond, who usually includes pithy and laconic quips after disposing of a villain.

 

• "Never read a pop-up book about giraffes." (Sean Lock)
• "Throwing acid is wrong. In some people's eyes." (Jimmy Carr)
• "My girlfriend makes me want to be a better person - so I can get a better girlfriend." (Anthony Jeselnik)
• "Cricket. No matter who wins, both teams, and all the fans, are losers." (Frankie Boyle)
• "If life were easy, it wouldn’t be difficult." (Kermit the Frog)
• "An escalator cannot break, it can only become stairs." (Mitch Hedberg)
• "My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave." (Burt Reynolds)
• "I'm on a whiskey diet… I've lost three days already." (Tommy Cooper)
• "What Iran needs now is a more modern leader—a mullah lite." (Shappi Khorsandi)
• "I have nothing to declare except my genius." (Oscar Wilde, upon arriving at US customs, 1882)^[3]
• "Take my wife ... please." (Henny Youngman)
• "They hired a 3-piece band that was so lousy, every time the waiter dropped a tray, we all got up and danced!" (Les Dawson)
• "What a magnificent show this is going to be when it starts!" (Ken Dodd)
• "I have a girlfriend! I've been going out with my girlfriend for… sex!" (Stewart Francis)
• "I have an L-shaped sofa… Lowercase." (Demetri Martin)
• "Crime in multi-story car parks is wrong on so many different levels." (Tim Vine^[4])
• "My wife – it's difficult to say what she does. She sells seashells on the seashore." (Milton Jones)
• "In Scotland the forbidden fruit is fruit." (Gary Delaney)
• "I collect books on minimalism." (Brian Lister)

 

ferroequinology

 

ferroequinology (uncountable)

(humorous, nonstandard) The study of railways in general, but especially locomotives. The study of iron horses.

Cachinnate

 Laugh loudly

callback

A callback, in terms of comedy, is a joke which refers to one previously told in the set. The second joke is often presented in a different context than the one which was used in the initial joke. Callbacks are usually used at or near the end of a set, as the aim is to create the biggest laugh at the end of a comic set. The main principle behind the callback is to make the audience feel a sense of familiarity with the subject matter, as well as with the comedian. It helps to create audience rapport. When the second joke is told, it induces a feeling similar to that of being told a personal or in-joke.

Deadpan

Deadpan is a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or body language, usually speaking in a casual, monotone, solemn, blunt, disgusted or matter-of-fact voice and expressing an unflappably calm, archly insincere or artificially grave demeanor. This delivery is also called dry wit when the intent, but not the presentation, is humorous, oblique, sarcastic or apparently unintentional.

transpositional pun

A transpositional pun is a complicated pun format with two aspects. It involves transposing the words in a well-known phrase or saying to get a daffynition-like clever redefinition of a well-known word unrelated to the original phrase. The redefinition is thus the first aspect, the transposition the second aspect.

As a result, transpositional puns are considered among the most difficult to create, and commonly the most challenging to comprehend, particularly for non-native speakers of the language in which they're given (most commonly English).

• Dieting: A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
• Hangovers: The wrath of grapes.
• Feudalism: It's your count that votes!

fabliau

A fabliau (plural fabliaux) is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between ca. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by an excessiveness of sexual and scatological obscenity. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the Decamerone and by Geoffrey Chaucer for his Canterbury Tales. Some 150 French fabliaux are extant, the number depending on how narrowly fabliau is defined. According to R. Howard Bloch, fabliaux are the first expression of literary realism in Europe.

switcheroo

A switcheroo is a sudden unexpected variation or reversal often associated with a joke (sometimes "the old switcheroo"). It is often used colloquially to refer to an act of intentionally or unintentionally swapping two objects.

As a comedic device, this was a favorite of Woody Allen; for a time, he used so many switcheroos that friends referred to him as "Allen Woody." Some of Allen's switcheroo gags were:

• Carrying a sword on the street, in case of an attack it turned into a cane, so people would feel sorry for him
• Carrying a bullet in his breast pocket; he claimed someone once threw a Bible at him and the bullet saved his life.

Faxlore

Faxlore is a sort of folklore: humorous texts, folk poetry, folk art, and urban legends that are circulated, not by word of mouth, but by fax machine. Xeroxlore or photocopylore is similar material circulated by photocopying; compare samizdat in Soviet-bloc countries.

"Photocopylore" is perhaps the most frequently encountered name for the phenomenon now, because of trademark concerns involving the Xerox Corporation. The first use of this term came in A Dictionary of English Folklore by Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud.

Administratium

Administratium is a well-known joke in scientific circles, and is a spoof both on the bureaucracy of scientific establishments and on descriptions of newly discovered chemical elements.

In 1991, Thomas Kyle (the supposed discoverer of this element) was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for physics, making him one of only three fictional people to have won the award.

"The Spoof" was written by William DeBuvitz in 1988 and first appeared in print in The Physics Teacher (January 1989 issue). It spread rapidly among university campuses and research centers, and many versions surfaced, often customized to the contributor's situation.

A similar joke concerns Administrontium which was referenced in print in 1993.

Another variation on the same joke is "Bureaucratium". A commonly heard description describes it as "having a negative half-life", in other words the more time passes, the more massive "Bureaucratium" becomes; it only grows larger and more sluggish. This obviously refers to the bureaucratic system, which is generally perceived as a system in which bureaucratic procedures accumulate and whatever needs to get done takes increasingly longer to get done as soon as it touches the bureaucracy.

burletta

A burletta (Italian, meaning little joke), also sometimes burla or burlettina, is a musical term generally denoting a brief comic Italian (or, later, English) opera. The term was used in the 18th century to denote the comic intermezzos between the acts of an opera seria, but was sometimes given to more extended works; Pergolesi's La serva padrona was designated a 'burletta' at its London premiere in 1750.

In England the term began to be used, in contrast to burlesque, for works that satirized opera but without using musical parody. Burlettas in English began to appear in the 1760s, the earliest identified being Midas by Kane O'Hara, first performed privately in 1760 near Belfast, and produced at Covent Garden in 1764. The form became debased when the term 'burletta' began to be used for English comic or ballad operas, as a way of evading the monopoly on opera in London belonging to Covent Garden and Drury Lane. After repeal of the 1737 Licensing Act in 1843, use of the term declined.

Chanchada

Chanchada is the name of a genre of (often musical) comedies produced in Brazil. Its name (given by journalists and film critics of the 1930s), coming from the Paraguayan Spanish slang and meaning "mess", "trash", "trick", implied the ease in accessibility of these films' content to a culturally deprived audience.

Crimp

A crimp is a type of humorous a cappella nonsense song, sung in a scat style featuring lyrics characterized by non-sequiturs that are rhythmically similar to beatboxing. A true crimp is often sung about a single event that happened to one or both of the crimpers, and usually can only be entirely understood by them and in this way it is very personal. Crimp is more than just a song, it often sports a small performance of hand gestures and pantomimes performed in sync with the music as well as all other crimpers.

Crimping was created by comedians Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt. The term crimping was first coined in "The Power Of The Crimp" episode 3 of The Mighty Boosh in season three. Originally they did not want to name it. However, after fan reaction, they decided to do so and have an episode about it. The name was derived from the word Krumping.

Crimp is rhythmically related to puirt a beul and beatboxing. Unlike beatboxing and scat, crimp contains lyrics bearing a similarity to puirt a beul in the sense that the rhythm is more important than the words themselves. Two features that particularly distinguish a crimp from similar styles are that:

(A) A crimp must be a cappella, and

(B) It must be sung by two or more people in synchrony.

Paedogeddon

Conjunction of the words paedophile and armageddon first used by Chris Morris in the 2001 Brass eye special "paedogeddon" to satorise the media hype surrounding paedophilia issues of the time.

mathemumorist

not also a mathematician but also a humorist.

Unobtainium

Unobtainium is a humorous term that refers to an extremely rare, costly, or physically impossible material needed to fulfill a given design for a given application. The name is a blend derived from unobtainable + ium (the suffix for a number of elements). Variations include unobtanium and unattainium, with the same meaning.

The properties of any particular "unobtainium" depend on the intended use. For example, a pulley made of unobtainium might be massless and frictionless. However, if used in a nuclear rocket, unobtainium would be light, strong at high temperatures, and resistant to radiation damage.

tickler

tickler: A person who or thing which amuses, tickles, excites.