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Pretentious? Moi?

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Stumbled across that online, and it was claimed to be the "only" two-word joke in existence. I find that hard to believe.

Now there's a distinction between that example, and an oxymoron, most of which are two words, but do not constitute a grammatically complete sentence.

Still, an oxymoron is a joke in the sense that it's humorous. Look up the definition of "joke" and you get something to this effect: A thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, esp. a story with a funny punchline. But an oxymoron has to be "set up" so you know it's being used as an example of a self-contradictory expression. You can't just walk up to someone and say "military intelligence" (George Carlin's classic example) and expect to get a laugh. So it would take more than two words if you include the setup.

Nowhere in the definition of "joke" does it say "a joke must be a stand-alone complete sentence or series of sentences." But since a joke is something communicated, in speech or writing, it would seem to me it must be grammatically complete. Even Henny Youngman's classic one-liners were complete sentences, e.g., "Take my wife … please."

If you Google "two word joke" you get oxymorons … way deep into the page rankings. You also get the occasional formal name, like "George Bush," but that's satire or opinion, not a true joke. I only stumbled across the example in the subject line by accident in an unrelated search.

So this post is less a question to be answered, and more an invitation for discussion. If you know a two-word joke that isn't just an oxymoron, and constitutes a grammatically complete sentence (or sentences, as in my example) I'd love to hear it. Or is an oxymoron just a sub-class of joke? Or am I being too literal in my interpretation of the definition of "joke?"

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(@emmettredd)
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In the visual arts, there is the sight gag. By the definition, that is not a joke since it is not written or spoken. I have been a great fan of Red Skelton for a long time. His miming sure seemed like a joke to me.

In another thread, we had some one-word oxymorons. If an oxymoron is a joke, it seems the one-word ones beat out the topic title.

Emmett

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One I learned in college:

"Euripides, Eumenides!"

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A good three-word joke

recursion: see recursion

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Great comments all. I had to do some online research before I got the "Euripides, Eumenides" joke. I read some Euripides when in HS, but hadn't heard of Eumenides. I see now it's just a pun … and maybe then only if you're Italian.   :) Found my clue here: http://ask.metafilter.com/72202/Do-you-know-jokes-which-presuppose-obscure-knowledge.

Getting back to my original post, seems like it's all about classes/categories. If we take the general class as "humor or comedy," then the subclasses might include:

  • jokes
  • limericks (and other intentionally humorous poetry)
  • sight gags (I loved Skelton too, and Carol Burnett, and the Three Stooges, etc.)
  • puns
  • satire
  • comics (the drawn kind)
  • oxymorons
  • paraprosdokians
  • self-referential statements (Glenn's recursion definition)

and probably a whole lot more that I can't think of at the moment. If it makes you laugh, smile, or just be amused, it counts as humor/comedy. So I think I'll just consider "Pretentious? Moi?" a valid 2-word joke. But I see now it's not the only 2-word joke, as I suspected.

Emmett: I searched for that thread you referred to about one-word oxymorons. Couldn't find it. If you can, please link.

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