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humorous by the listener or reader. This sort of "joke" is not the same as a practical joke.
Laughter, the intended human reaction to jokes, is healthy, uses the stomach muscles, and releases endorphins, natural happiness-inducing chemicals, into the bloodstream. Daily laughter is recommended to every human being. Jokes have been the subject of serious academic study, a notable example being Sigmund Freud's "Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious".
See also: Internet humor, lightbulb joke, insult, knock knock joke, shaggy dog story, comedy, jester, punch line, world's funniest joke, you have two cows
Blonde jokes are jokes about people, generally women, who have blonde hair and are assumed not to be very smart. These jokes are generally considered to be derogatory, but are usually taken with good humor. They are usually variants on traditional ethnic jokes.
Examples
A sexist joke is one that expresses the sexist belief that one gender or sex is somehow superior to the other.
Examples
A dirty joke is one that depends for all or part of its humour on reference to taboo sexual content. Many dirty jokes are also sexist.
The effect of the dirty joke may be enhanced by the addition of further taboos, as in the subgenre of nun jokes.
Example
Another subgenre is that of unmet expectations, in which the joke is the absence of the sexual content which the audience has been led to expect.
Example
An ethnic joke relies for humorous effect on stereotypes about particular ethnicities, often those from different (neighbour) nations or minorities. For example Finns tell jokes about Swedes and Gypsies. Sometimes they are considered in good taste, meant to poke fun at or about another culture, while other times they are considered offensive or racist. Sometimes the difference between the two judgements is in the nature of the joke itself, and sometimes the difference is in the perception of those hearing it.
In an attempt to preserve the humor of ethnic jokes without their derogatory nature, on rare occasions such jokes are told with the word ethnic or some variant in place of the nationality of the subject. For example: "Two ethnics are out duck hunting. They hunt and hunt and hunt and still have not killed one duck. Finally, ethnic #1 says to ethnic #2: 'Maybe we'd do better if we threw the dog up higher.' " Another twist is letting people of that same target group enjoy a monopoly on telling jokes about themselves.
Many ethnic jokes appear in several cultures with nothing changed except the group being disparaged. For example, many American jokes about Poles, Canadian jokes about Newfoundlanders, British jokes about the Irish, and Indian jokes about Sikhs are identical except for the ethnic group which is the subject of the joke.
Examples
See also Newfie.
Playing the dozens is an African-American custom in which two competitors -- usually males -- go head to head in a competition of comedic trash talk. They take turns "cracking on," or insulting, one another, their adversary's mother or other family member until one of them has no comeback. In the U.S., the practice can be traced back to chattel slavery, when violence among slaves was a property crime with potentially draconian consequences. Verbal sparring became a substitute for physical contention. While the competition on its face is usually light-hearted, smiles sometimes mask real tensions.
The dozens can be a harmless game, or, if tempers flare, a prelude to physical violence. But in its purest form, the dozens is part of an African-American custom of verbal sparring, of "woofin'" (see wolf ticket) and "signifyin'," intended to defuse conflict amicably, descended from an oral tradition rooted in traditional West African cultures. The dozens is a contest of personal power -- of wit, self-control, verbal ability, mental agility and mental toughness. Defeat can be humiliating; but a skilled contender, win or lose, may gain respect.
"Yo' mama," a common, widely recognized argumentative rejoinder in African-Amercan vernacular speech, is a cryptic reference to the dozens.
The term "the dozens" refers to the devaluing on the auctionblock of slaves who were past their prime, who were aged or who, after years of back-breaking toil, no longer were capable of hard labor. These enslaved human beings often were sold by the dozen.
Examples
Yo' mama's so fat...
Yo' mama's so dumb...
Yo' mama's so old...
Yo' mama's so-o-o-o bald...
Yo' sister's so ugly...
Yo' brother's so stupid...
Political jokes tell about politicians and heads of states.
Examples
See also: You have two cows
Although perhaps the most famous of all jokes in the English language, this joke is a meta-joke, in that its humor value comes from the fact that it is expected to be funny. Additionally, it is rarely told on its own, but it is referenced, modified, or parodied in a number of other jokes.
Often posed as a common riddle, the answer is twisted humorously.
Q: What is black and white and read all over?
A1: A newspaper. (The common riddle answer.)
A2: A bleeding xxx. (xxx can be a penquin, nun, any likely wearer of a tuxedo, etc.)
(See knock-knock joke, grape joke and elsewhere here for other types of this kind.)
Usually a riddle of the form "Why did the elephant...?", where the answer is ridiculously impossible.
Examples
These target the perceived flaws of people in certain trades. Lawyer jokes are traditionally popular in the United States.
Example
Italians trade jokes about the Carabinieri national police force, and this fact is rather good-humouredly acknowledged even in the force's own website, probably because the Carabinieri know that, jokes aside, they do enjoy a high degree of respect. Carabinieri are factually known to be occasionally willing to tell a few such jokes themselves. It is also known that they have a small office in Rome devoted to tracking, developing and collecting jokes (but this is a joke).
Example
A shaggy dog story is an extremely long and involved joke with a weak or completely nonexistent punchline. The humor lies in building up the audience's anticipation and then letting them down completely.
Shaggy jokes appear to date from the 1930s, although there are several competing variants for the "original" shaggy dog story. According to one, an advertisement is placed in a newspaper, searching for the shaggiest dog in the world. The teller of the joke then relates the story of the search for the shaggiest dog in extreme and exaggerated detail (flying around the world, climbing mountains, fending off sabre-toothed tigers, etc); a good teller will be able to stretch the story out to over half an hour. When the winning dog is finally presented, the advertiser takes a look at the dog and states: "I don't think he's so shaggy".
A subgenre of jokes derives their humor simply from violating taboos and being so blatantly offensive in their subject matter that (for some) the situation becomes funny, not macabre. A staple of these jokes and the source of the name is dead babies, a subject which would usually be considered the opposite of "funny." A fair number of the jokes are derivations of each other, told in sequence for maximum effect. Others derive their humor from the implication that the teller knows from personal experience. These sorts typically work best in a verbal rather than a written context.
Examples
A large number of jokes, beginning "You have two cows...", describe what would be done with the cows under a certain political or economic system. The jokes satirize many countries, television shows, religions, and systems, especially bureaucracy, communism, and capitalism.
Examples
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