Joke Explainer

Q: What are you eating under there? A: Under where? Q: You are eating underwear? Gross! This is potty humor, an ambush joke, and also a joke based on a pun. The jokester asks a question and hopes that the target says the correct response. The initial question is ambiguous, so there is a chance that the target of the joke will be confused and ask "under where?" If they get a different response such as "what are you talking about?" or "I am not eating anything", then the joke fails completely The pun is based on the similarity of the words "under where" and the word "underwear", which sound very similar. This is the type of joke that little kids might say on the playground. Another version of this joke used by the band "Barenaked Ladies" in their song "Pinch me" I could hide out under there/ I just made you say underwear Which is even less funny than the original joke in my opinion.

As I get older I remember all the people I’ve lost along the way I think to myself, maybe a career as a tour guide wasn’t for me. This joke is funny because of a pun - the phrase "lost along the way" normally is used to indicate that something was lost in the process of time, and when used in regards to people the reader expects that the people were lost due to the jokester growing apart from them due to time passing. The ending of the joke indicates that instead of the expected colloquial meaning for the phrase the jokester was literally losing the people that she (or he) was supposed to be leading on tours.

It’s a 5 minute walk from my house to the pub. It’s a 30 minute walk from the pub to my house. The difference is staggering. This is funny because of a pun. If someone describes something as staggering, usually that indicates that it is shocking or surprising, but staggering in this case is used as a verb - one which means "stumbling around", because personally the jokester was walking home while drunk. People being drunk is also considered funny, so that might add to the humor of this joke. I will admit - I chuckled when I read this.

Hamsters are the guinea pigs of pets This joke is a pun centered around the use of the word "guinea pig". Guinea pig can mean a specific animal of the species Cavia porcellus, but the word can also be used to denote that something is a test subject (because guinea pigs are traditionally used in animal testing in laboratory settings.) The phrase "A is the B of C" means if you were to take object A from category C, and compare it to an object in a different category it would be the most like object B. For instance: "Parmesan is the Mercedes-Benz of cheeses", which means that if Parmesan cheese were a car, it would be a Mercedes-Benz, since it is excellent. So, given those things the joke could mean (if you use the word guinea pig colloquially as a test subject) "people get hamsters because they want to test out the idea of having a pet". This is something that actually does happen - I myself have told kids that if they want to test out what having ...

  "I have a split personality," said Tom, being frank. This is a pun. The joke here is centered on the word 'Frank'. Frank can be an adjective which means "open, honest and direct", but it can also be a person's first name, and if Tom has multiple personalities, then he could be both frank (as an adjective), and Frank as a proper noun. This joke would also work with the name Earnest, and is also the lynchpin of the play "The Importance of Being Earnest." I suppose that it also bears mentioning that this is a joke about mental disorders. I find this joke to be highly amusing.

My wife told me to take the spider out instead of killing it Went out. Had a few drinks. Nice guy. He's a web designer This is a joke about a misunderstanding, it has talking animals in it (sort of), and it has a pun. There are also two punch lines in this joke. First: the misunderstanding. The wife meant "take the spider outside and release it there", and the husband heard "take the spider out on a date". That misunderstanding occurring is pretty unlikely, so it makes the joke funny. Second: the spider is a web designer - this is a pun. Spiders make literal spider webs, and a sentient spider could possibly be said to design them, however a web designer is usually someone that designs websites, so there are two possible meanings of the term Additionally, it is most likely true that if he took the spider out and found it to be a nice guy that the spider talks, because otherwise how would he have determined that the spider is nice and a web designer?

I'm in a really bad place right now.... Not mentally, I've just found myself in ****ing Utah. This is an insult, a pun, a joke with a swear word in it, and also a joke with an unexpected ending. The insult is obvious - the jokester doesn't like Utah. Insults are humorous, so that contributes to the humor. Swear words are also considered humorous, and so that would also contribute to the humor. Finally, the setup gets you thinking about mental health, and the unexpected ending of the joke makes you realize that the phrase "in a bad place" (which is usually used to indicate that the person is feeling severely depressed) actually was being used literally, and is therefore a pun. 

Warning: this post contains hyperbole. Don't read it if you are too stupid to know what that means.  This is a meme, and also a pun. The humor in this meme is twofold. First I'll talk about the pun: "Let that sink in" is a colloquial phrase that means "Take a moment to think about that so that you will be able to understand it". Another interpretation of the phrase could mean "I want you to allow that sink to be able to come inside". This meme uses both of those interpretations of the phrase, the first being written before the second. It is a humorous juxtaposition of the two meanings. The second thing that is funny about this is the absolutely awful quality of the image editing used to create this meme. It is really truly horrific, and that it about the funniest thing ever.

Why the heck did they name them 'Soldier ants' and not 'Combatants'?

Q: What do you get when you cross an airplane with a magician? A: A flying sorcerer.

Q: What do you call the Swiss president’s airplane? A: Tobler One.

Did you know that they just determined that there is a different strain of Covid 19 which mainly spreads via people at the airport, and which is always deadly? It’s a terminal illness.

Q: Do you have prince albert in a can? A: Yes. Q: Well, you'd better let him out! This is a prank call, similar to the "Is your refrigerator running?" joke. In case you don't know prank calls were a way that kids would amuse themselves by calling people and telling jokes like the aforementioned joke. They only worked well up until the invention of caller ID. For this joke to be funny, the jokester needs to call a drugstore in the early 20th century, and ask them the setup. The person who answers the phone would answer yes, that they do have "prince albert in a can", since it is a popular brand of chewing tobacco back during that time period. The punchline "Well, you'd better let him out!" indicates that the prankster was not calling about the chewing tobacco, but was instead calling about the actual Prince Albert. Now, Prince albert was dead by the time that this joke could have been told, since he died before the invention of the telephone. Ad...

A World War II pilot is reminiscing before school children about his days in the air force. "In 1942," he says, "the situation was really tough. The Germans had a very strong air force. I remember, " he continues, "one day I was protecting the bombers and suddenly, out of the clouds, these fokkers appeared. (At this point, several of the children giggle.) I looked up, and right above me was one of them. I aimed at him and shot him down. They were swarming. I immediately realized that there was another fokker behind me." At this instant the girls in the auditorium start to giggle and boys start to laugh. The teacher stands up and says, "I think I should point out that 'Fokker' was the name of the German-Dutch aircraft company" "That's true," says the pilot, "but these fokkers were flying Messerschmidts." This joke is a joke about airplanes, so you could say that it is an airplane joke. In this joke the WW2 pilot is ...

Gravity is one of the most fundamental forces in the universe, but if you remove it, you get gravy. This is a linguistic pun. The joke is that "if you remove it" could mean "if you remove gravity" in this sentence, but it could also mean "if you remove the letters I and T". Removing the I and T from gravity would leave you with the letters of the word Gravy, so the punch line is reasonable, however this joke is funny because the listener would normally assume that "it" refers to gravity, not to the letter I and T. 

I don’t like people who take drugs, for example: airport security. This is a joke that is centered around the ambiguity of human language (a pun). The joke is that the person who hears the joke first assumes that the jokester dislikes people that use drugs, however the example makes it clear that the jokester actually dislikes people that confiscate drugs. Since take is a fairly general purpose verb in English, both understandings of the sentence are perfectly reasonable. 

The thief who stole my iPhone could face time. This is a pun. For someone to "face time" means that they are in jeopardy of going to jail, however facetime is a phone app that is available on iphones. If you stole an Iphone it is possible that you could go to jail for it, but it is also possible that you could use the app face time (if you unlocked the phone successfully)

I went to the doctor because I can't stop saying airplane jokes He said it was terminal This is an airplane joke. It might also be a pun, but if it is, it is probably the worst pun ever. The humor is centered around the word terminal. Terminal means both "a disease that will cause death", and "the end of a transportation route" (such as the place an airplane lands). Now in this sentence, the first sense of the word makes sense, but the second sense makes no sense at all. The pun is particularly poor and the second sentence is senseless since the second sense of the word doesn't make sense. That being said, that doesn't really ruin the joke - it is still pretty funny because bad puns can still be funny.

If there's one thing that makes me throw up, it's a dart board on a ceiling. This is a pun. The pun is centered around the words "throw up". Throw up usually means vomit, or chunder, however in this instance it means throw darts straight upward into the air. The listener assumes the normal definition of throw up when they hear the set up of the joke, but the end of the makes it more likely it is the alternate definition, and that confusion that it causes is funny.

I can't believe no one has managed to come up with a cure for anorexia yet, honestly, I thought it'd be a piece of cake. This is a pun. The humor of the joke is centered around the phrase "piece of cake". Literally piece of cake means a piece of cake, but figuratively it means "something that is very easy". To cure anorexia is not that easy because it is mental, and not physical, and we are not good at helping mental issues. So eating cake to cure anorexia is probably possible, though I doubt that it would be effective in most cases. So, not only is there a pun here, but both senses of the pun are absurd, which makes this pretty funny. That is - of course - if you are ok making fun of people that have an illness.