See brick joke on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "First coined on media analysis wiki TV Tropes, inspired by an older pair of jokes. In the first joke, a man throws a brick in the air in the punchline. The second joke appears to be unrelated, but then ends with a dog catching the brick.",
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"ref": "2016 December 26, James Poniewozik, “The Joys of ‘Atlanta,’ Where Real Life, for Some, Insists on Being Surreal”, in New York Times:",
"text": "The invisible car is a variant on something called a brick joke: actually a pair of jokes in which the first sets up an unresolved element that returns as the punch line of the second, ideally after the listener has forgotten about it.",
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"ref": "2020, William P. Seeley, Attentional Engines: A Perceptual Theory of the Arts, →ISBN, page 210:",
"text": "Genre conventions raise familiar questions about the role the bowling ball might play later on. It is in fact the set up for a brick joke.",
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"ref": "2021 June 30, “Thank God: The Penguins In This Kids Movie Just Started A Soul Train To ‘Everybody Dance Now’ Which Means The Movie Will Probably Be Over Soon”, in Clickhole:",
"text": "We’re also probably still on the hook for some final post-credits beat where the snooty french chef the penguins locked in a bathroom halfway through the movie comes back for some kind of limp, half-assed brick joke, but that’s probably as bad as it’ll get.",
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"glosses": [
"A joke in a film, television show, book etc, in which there is a substantial gap between set-up and punchline, typically bringing back an unresolved plot point after the audience is expected to have forgotten about it."
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"id": "en-brick_joke-en-noun-zjpbYgHZ",
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"(media) A joke in a film, television show, book etc, in which there is a substantial gap between set-up and punchline, typically bringing back an unresolved plot point after the audience is expected to have forgotten about it."
],
"related": [
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"word": "brick joke"
}
{
"etymology_text": "First coined on media analysis wiki TV Tropes, inspired by an older pair of jokes. In the first joke, a man throws a brick in the air in the punchline. The second joke appears to be unrelated, but then ends with a dog catching the brick.",
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"ref": "2016 December 26, James Poniewozik, “The Joys of ‘Atlanta,’ Where Real Life, for Some, Insists on Being Surreal”, in New York Times:",
"text": "The invisible car is a variant on something called a brick joke: actually a pair of jokes in which the first sets up an unresolved element that returns as the punch line of the second, ideally after the listener has forgotten about it.",
"type": "quotation"
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"ref": "2020, William P. Seeley, Attentional Engines: A Perceptual Theory of the Arts, →ISBN, page 210:",
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"type": "quotation"
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"ref": "2021 June 30, “Thank God: The Penguins In This Kids Movie Just Started A Soul Train To ‘Everybody Dance Now’ Which Means The Movie Will Probably Be Over Soon”, in Clickhole:",
"text": "We’re also probably still on the hook for some final post-credits beat where the snooty french chef the penguins locked in a bathroom halfway through the movie comes back for some kind of limp, half-assed brick joke, but that’s probably as bad as it’ll get.",
"type": "quotation"
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],
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"A joke in a film, television show, book etc, in which there is a substantial gap between set-up and punchline, typically bringing back an unresolved plot point after the audience is expected to have forgotten about it."
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"(media) A joke in a film, television show, book etc, in which there is a substantial gap between set-up and punchline, typically bringing back an unresolved plot point after the audience is expected to have forgotten about it."
],
"topics": [
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}
],
"word": "brick joke"
}
Download raw JSONL data for brick joke meaning in All languages combined (2.9kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (ccec6f1 and 4deed51). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.