Classic jokes are essentially oral traditions that get passed from person to person for decades until someone decides to write them down. Here's where some of your favorites came from.
Why the Chicken Actually Crossed the Road—and the History Behind 9 More Jokes
Updated on Jun. 20, 2024
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Knock-Knock!
During Prohibition in the 1930s, if you wanted to get into a speakeasy, you would knock on the door, someone would ask, “Who’s there?” and you’d have to say a password. According to joke historian Charlie Orr, drunken patrons often had fun with the password custom as the night wore on, and that’s how the knock-knock joke was born. Orr claimed that the very first knock-knock joke was told in the restroom of a Philadelphia hotel. The first guy said, “Knock-knock.” His friend replied, “Who’s there?” “Ranger.” “Ranger who?” “Ranger clothes before you leave here!” Check out the only list of short, memorable jokes you’ll ever need.
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Tom Swifties
The favorite pun of the good folks behind Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader consists of a made-up quotation followed by a clever attribute that reinforces what was said:
• “I feel like raising the dead,” said Tom, cryptically.
• “That’s the last time I stick my arm in a lion’s mouth,” said Tom off-handedly.
These puns parody the writing style in the Tom Swift book series. Created in 1910 by Edward Stratemeyer (who also created the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew), Tom Swift is a teenaged hero who uses his wits to thwart bad guys. Stratemeyer used clever wordplay, such as, “‘We must hurry,’ said Tom swiftly.” The pun style was originally called Tom Swiftly, later shortened to Tom Swifty. Check out the surprising origins of these common phrases we use all the time.
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Polish jokes
Blame Adolf Hitler for these. In his quest to conquer Poland in the 1930s, Hitler pushed the racist “dumb Polack” stereotype so the rest of Europe wouldn’t sympathize with the country’s fate. The Nazi propaganda machine claimed, among other things, that Polish soldiers on horseback had once attacked German tanks with swords. That stereotype spread to the United States. after the war, and by the 1960s, Poles had become a punchline. The TV show Laugh-in (1967–73) featured a regular segment dedicated to Polish jokes. Books of Polish jokes followed over the next decade. The perception began to change in 1978 when Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became the first Polish pope (John Paul II). The fad tapered off after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
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Anti-jokes
Why is 6 afraid of 7? It’s not. Numbers aren’t sentient and are therefore incapable of feeling fear. Jokes that trade traditional humor for literal, anti-climactic punch lines are gaining popularity in the age of the Internet, but the concept is far older. Some consider the “shaggy dog story” a precursor to modern anti-jokes. Shaggy dog stories are long, often incredibly detailed, and set the reader up for some epic humor, only to culminate in an anticlimactic ending (in one namesake example, it turns out that the dog is—spoiler alert—not actually that shaggy). Though they may seem unfunny and pointless, notable artists throughout history, from Mark Twain to Arlo Guthrie to Weird Al, have used “shaggy dog”-type techniques to convey a point.
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Yo’ Mama
These jokes became popular in the 1960s in inner cities as part of a trash-talking game called the Dozens. Two African-American competitors would trade insults until one of them couldn’t think of a comeback. The Dozens, which is considered a progenitor of free-style rap music, goes back centuries. According to Mona Lisa Saloy’s essay Still Laughing to Keep from Crying, “The Dozens has its origins in the slave trade of New Orleans, where deformed slaves, punished with dismemberment for disobedience, were grouped in lots of a ‘cheap dozen.’ To be sold as part of the ‘dozens’ was the lowest blow possible.” And in the insult game that came out of it, there is no lower blow than one directed at your opponent’s mama:
- Yo’ mama so hairy, Bigfoot was taking her picture!
- Yo’ mama so stupid, she cooks with Old Spice!
- Yo’ mama so fat, she went to the movies and sat next to everyone!
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Walking into a bar
People, animals, and punch lines have been walking into bars since 1952, when C. B. Palmer wrote a joke with that setup for the New York Times. Rather anticlimactic and possibly created with the intention of poking fun at alcoholics (judge for yourself), it nevertheless spawned a countless number of similar gags. Here are some of our favorite bar jokes that you probably haven’t heard before.
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The chicken joke
A joke about a chicken crossing a road first appeared in print in 1847 in a New York magazine called The Knickerbocker, on a page titled “Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.” A reader wrote in:
There are “quips and quillets” which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: “Why does a chicken cross the street?” Are you “out of town?” Do you “give it up?” Well, then: “Because it wants to get on the other side!”
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Changing a light bulb
Unfortunately, jokes about how many of certain people it takes to change a light bulb also gained popularity as a means of perpetrating hurtful stereotypes about various nationalities and ethnicities. They originated primarily as a subset of Polish jokes, gaining popularity in America in the 1960s. Fortunately, though, they’ve evolved since then, instead poking good-natured, usually self-aware fun at different careers or fields of study.
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The newspaper joke
What’s black and white and red all over? A newspaper, of course. The joke first appeared in an American humor anthology in 1917.
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Elephant jokes
How do you get six elephants in a Volkswagen? Three in the front and three in the back. This fad began in 1960, when Wisconsin toy maker L.M. Becker Co. released a set of 50 elephant-joke trading cards. (That one is card #12.) Next, check out some more corny jokes that everyone will laugh at.
