joke

«joke» in Mova's school dictionary: Something you say or do to make people laugh, often a… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (joke, jokes); verb (joke, jokes, joked, joking)

meaning for a pupil

1) Something you say or do to make people laugh, often a short funny story. tree →

2) Something that is silly or not taken seriously: "The test was a joke." tree →

3) As a verb, to say things to be funny, not seriously: "I'm only joking." tree →

sense in the lessons

In everyday life, jokes are fun when everyone laughs; a joke that hurts someone is not kind. In language, many jokes play on words (puns). Phrases: tell a joke, play a joke on, only joking, take a joke, inside joke, no joke (serious).

examples

• Tell me a joke! tree →
• That joke was so funny. tree →
• I was only joking. tree →
• They played a joke on their teacher. tree →
• A good joke makes everyone laugh, not just one person. tree →
• He can't take a joke. tree →
• Getting lost in the snow is no joke. tree →
• Why did the chicken cross the road? It's an old joke. tree →

note

"Joking" drops the e. A joke that makes someone feel bad is teasing, not a joke. "No joke" means something serious.

In the corpora

• Exaggeration that everyone knows is a joke, like lights «seen from space», is harmless fun.
• Serious accusations belong to courts and investigations, not to jokes in the playground.
• "Allegedly" means someone has claimed it but it is not proved; a parody account is a joke copying a real name.
• Computers are fast at sums and storing facts but weak at common sense, such as knowing when a joke hurts someone.
• Bots tend to repeat the most common jokes, because those appeared most often in their training text.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «joke» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.