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bit surprised". In each case, there is a "set-up", which expresses a common idea, then a "twist" that takes the statement in a different direction than expected. (I'm sure there are proper terms for these two parts, but I don't recall them off-hand.) Youngman turns an apparent introduction to a chat about his wife into a plea to get rid of her, amazingly with only four words — perhaps the most succinct one-liner ever. Parker sounds like she's going to make a common analogy to express a large quantity, then shifts it into an insult, as RolandStJude says.
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miles, or 100,000 km. That's nearly two and a half times around the Earth!"), and turns those expectations on their heads by using the colloquial definition of "laid" to mean "had sex." There were no female students at Yale until 1969, two years after
Dorothy Parker died, and so if this joke is impugning the virtue of any girls, it would be students at Vassar College and other schools with female students who were likely to be dates of Yale students.
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Not every one-liner has a clearly divided set-up and twist. Marx's description of politics ("the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies") takes a nominally serious list of characteristics and inserts insults into each of them. But
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This is not sourced info, but let me try to point out the difference between a quip and a "one-liner". Notice the two one-liners mentioned above — Youngman's famous "Take my wife… please" and Parker's nearly-as-famous "If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a
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By the same token, why is Bruce
Campbell listed among the examples in this article? He is an action-movie star, and not a comedian or author. Yes, he frequently plays characters who deliver one-liners, but there's just a fundamental difference between spontaneously quipping the kind of things that
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information about the concept of "one-liner joke". These should provide one or more definitions, some history, and notable uses. Only within that context would it be appropriate to cite specific examples. Currently, we seem to have it backward — minimal factual info and the danger of making this a
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This joke is a pun playing on multiiple meanings of the word "laid." It relies on our expectation that we will hear a factoids about the length or volume of some object ("If all arteries, veins, and capillaries of the human circulatory system were laid end to end, the total length would be 60,000
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I've twice removed attempts to broaden the scope of this article to include action/adventure quips like "Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker" and "I'm a little tied up right now", not only because they don't meet the classic idea of a one-liner joke (which includes the set-up and resolution in a single
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Contrast these with "I'm a little tied up right now" and "Let off some steam". These quips are not self-contained, as a joke must be. They require a situational set-up that is not part of the quote.
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never-ending list. I'm too bogged down in the real world to do proper research for these sources, but I can help vet and format the citations if anyone else wants to take a crack at it. ~
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The Henry
Youngman joke ("Take my wife. Please.") does not contain wit and is, therefore, not a one-liner. If he was the king of one-liners, maybe there's a better example.--
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line), but also because the broadening seems to be more of an excuse to add a bunch of popular movie quotes rather than to discuss and delimit the subject.
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The joke impugns the virtue of the girls at Yale. It relies on an understanding of the slang meaning of the word "laid" (to have sexual relations).
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To explain a joke means it isn't right for the audience. See, take this perticular person... Please, 'cause I don't want him anymore.
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This is a sexist joke. It implies that women attend Yale
College on a regular basis, which is not true. They are all men in drag.
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As you can clearly tell, the "take" is first used as meaning "for example", then used as meaning "obtain possesion of". Got it?
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No. This is not true. It is a one-liner, but it is in two sentences. Which is irrelevant, but pertinent at the same time.
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Dorothy Parker did, vs. delivering a scripted line. A subtle difference, maybe, but the two things are not the same.
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on
Knowledge. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
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I imagine the confusion comes from the fact that many one-liners and quips both include forms of
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Alcohol isn’t the answer to everything but atleast it makes you forget the question.
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it's still a form of twisting an ordinary idea into a joke in a single sentence.
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Are they really jokes? Not very funny, any of them; just old used things.
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would be added as an external references to this wikipage?
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Am I the only one who hasn't heard of a Shmuel breban?
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I don't really understand that quote.. help me out?
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