Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
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?"
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
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.
Dudley Moore did a hilarious segment in Beyond the Fringe that was called "And the Same to You" on the album release that consists of a piano instrumental that somehow manages to combine Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and the "Colonel Bogey March" (aka the theme from "Bridge on the River Kwai"). It runs over five and a half minutes, and there's not a single word or other vocal sound in the whole thing.
There are two major sources of humor besides the juxtaposition of two such mismatched pieces of music: first, having started the piece, Dudley finds himself unable to end it, becoming more and more desperate as what should be the closing cadences keep turning into further continuations. And second, at the very end, he finally does manage to end it by abruptly falling off the piano bench.
Can't believe I forgot about music in my (pretentious) list of humor/comedy. Excellent point, Ron. I haven't seen Beyond the Fringe but I will now.
Funny lyrics, like the stuff Weird Al does, are imho equivalent to a "joke." But I've always believed that true "humor in music" involves unexpected changes in meter or scale. Much of the humor in jokes comes from the element of surprise or shock, and that, of course, can be done with music too. For example, Haydn's Symphony 88 … lots of incongruous stuff in there. It always makes me smile.
But then there's this "middle ground" in music, involving neither funny lyrics or unexpected meter/scale changes. It makes you smile too, and I would say it counts as humor/comedy. Hard to describe, but for an example, check out this a capella, overdubbed, live performance by Reggie Watts.
http://laughingsquid.com/reggie-watts-on-humor-in-music/
And I swear I wasn't just smiling at his hair.
Jackie, that is one of the funniest examples of musical humor I've ever seen/heard. Thank you for sharing that! Some might say it's more an example of "performance humor" (another category I missed on my list), and not unlike flash mob performances, which also make me smile. But the music itself was humorous. Even without the ref and commentators.
OK, I now have five 2-word jokes:
1. Pretentious? Moi?
2. Euripides, Eumenides!
3. Vacuuming sucks.
4. Everybody generalizes.
5. Gravity sucks.
I have a feeling more will show up in this thread, now that people seem to be picking up on the "pattern." Has to be a full sentence(s) to qualify as a "joke." And will probably be self-referential (like #1 or #4), or a play on words like the others.
And no, this is not a challenge. I started this thread in the hopes of refuting or verifying the claim that #1 was the only 2-word joke, and I've succeeded.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)