Tell Me A Joke
Thougts On What Makes A Joke A Joke
Almost without fail, the first thing I hear when I tell someone I’m a comedian is: “Tell me a joke.” While some comedians get annoyed by that, it’s not a big deal to me. People want to laugh. I get it. I’m also an academic, a linguist in particular, which means I love words. Take the word “joke,” for example. The Latin root -ioc gives us the terms iocus (noun) and iocārī (verb), which carry the connotations of “jest.” In Proto-Italic the related root -joko can have meanings such “utterance” and even “prayer.” Go back as far as we can, to Proto-Indo European, and we find that -ioko just means “utterance” or “word.”
Historically, then, a joke could be a sound/utterance, a word, and even a prayer. And it can still be all those things today. We still laugh at farts and fart jokes don’t we? Some words are inherently funny or funny sounding; I happen to think “saddlebags” is one of them. And what about prayers? They can be hilarious, too. I remember having a family over for dinner once and the second I started saying the mealtime prayer, their 7-year-old yells out, “LAME!” We all lost it! Granted, the boy’s comment wasn’t the prayer itself, but I have heard some funny prayers over the years. When I was pastoring, I once had a congregant who asked me to say a prayer for her adult daughter’s butthole because she had hemorrhoids. She used more colorful language, in fact, but you get the point. Praying for someone’s b-hole is going to be funny no matter what.
Anyway, my point is this: I find it helpful to have a more specific or technical definition of “joke” than simply word, utterance, etc. Greg Dean’s definition is helpful: “1 thing with 2 interpretations.” The “thing” here can, of course, be a sound, utterance, word, etc. It can be anything. The requirement? It must have 2 possible interpretations.
If we use this definition, we realize that some things are funny that aren’t jokes. And/or not everything that’s funny or sounds like a joke is actually a joke. That might seem obvious, but if you spend enough time in comedy, you realize just how many people mistake a rant, a statement, an edgy comment, an idea, a topic, or a premise for something funny.
A joke isn’t just saying something amusing—it’s a structured collision of expectation and surprise. A setup, which focuses on 1 thing and gives an interpretation of that 1 thing, creates an assumed reality, an expectation. Then the punchline subverts the reality of that 1 thing and its first interpretation in an unexpected or surprising way by giving it a second interpretation. It’s why a simple misdirection like “I’m on a religious diet—I’ve not been to church in years” works. The first half of the sentence sets an expectation (a diet rooted in religious beliefs that helps you lose weight), and the second half surprises the audience (no weight lost, just not going to church). The laugh comes from that gap between expectation and realization or, more specifically by giving the 1 thing “religious diet,” 2 different interpretations.
The key element is surprise. If a statement confirms what the audience already believes, it’s not really a joke. If a comedian just says, “Relationships are tough,” that’s not a joke. That’s just a relatable fact. But if a comedian says, “Relationships are tough. You either die single or stay together long enough that your special someone sighs every time you speak,” now you’ve got the makings of a joke. That’s because an expectation (relationships should last and be fulfilling) is set up then flipped (they last, but at what cost?).
There’s also a rhythm to joke structure. The way words are arranged, how syllables land, how the beat of the sentence carries the audience to the laugh. And, as I said already, some words seem inherently funnier than others and some phrasings give the punchline more hit. That’s why comics rewrite jokes a hundred times just to shave off an unnecessary syllable. It’s madness!
But not all jokes need a clear-cut setup and punch. Some jokes come from the tension itself. A lot of modern comedy plays with awkwardness, absurdity, and even silence as part of the joke. I think immediately about the way Norm Macdonald would tell a long-winded joke just to land on a dumb pun—it was his commitment more than the pun(chline) that made it funny. Steven Wright could say, “Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time,” and get a laugh because the logic itself is ridiculous.
That’s the beauty of stand-up: comedy evolves, but the core principle of surprise remains. If there’s no subversion, no shift, no unexpected turn, no 1 thing with 2 possible interpretations—there’s no joke. What’s incredible is when a comedian can take all that work and make it feel accidental or spontaneous in front of an audience. In my mind, the more I can understand how jokes work, the better I’ll get at delivering them in a way that feels effortless—even when it isn’t. After all, I think that’s mostly what people anyway want when they put me on the spot and say, “Tell me a joke.”