See gallows humor in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for gallows humor meaning in English (8.8kB)
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"text": "1931, \"German Falstaff\" (review of The Mirror of Fools by Alfred Neumann), Time, 16 Jan.,\nAuthor Neumann defiantly admits why he wrote this historical-romantic farce: \"Because I wanted to fight against the general and my personal depression, and because in hard and bad times there is always one tragicomic feeling in place—gallows humor.\""
},
{
"ref": "1971, Kurt Vonnegut, “Running Experiments Off: An Interview”, in Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut",
"text": "The term was part of the language before Freud wrote an essay on it -- 'gallows humour.' This is middle European humour, a response to hopeless situations. It's what a man says faced with a perfectly hopeless situation and he still manages to say something funny. Freud gives examples: A man being led out to be hanged at dawn says, 'Well, the day is certainly starting well.' It's generally called Jewish humour in this country. Actually it's humour from the peasants' revolt, the thirty years' war, and from the Napoleonic wars. It's small people being pushed this way and that way, enormous armies and plagues and so forth, and still hanging on in the face of hopelessness. Jewish jokes are middle European jokes. And the black humourists are gallows humourists, as they try to be funny in the face of situations which they see as just horrible.",
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"ref": "2005, Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country, page 5",
"text": "True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. . . . While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, \"I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.\"",
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"ref": "2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, page 142",
"text": "Mattis, it turned out, was meeting with Trudeau at NATO headquarters. Already engaging in gallows humor, I wondered if Mattis was defecting.",
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"word": "絞架幽默"
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"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
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"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "绞架幽默"
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"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "groen lachen"
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"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
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"lang": "French",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
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"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
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"word": "humour de gibet"
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"lang": "German",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
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"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "χιούμορ αγχονών"
},
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"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "הומור שחור"
},
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"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "akasztófahumor"
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"lang": "Icelandic",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "gálgahúmor"
},
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"tags": [
"masculine"
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{
"code": "it",
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"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
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"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "絞首台のヒューモア"
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"roman": "gyosudae yumeo",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "교수대 유머"
},
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"lang": "Latvian",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
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"roman": "víselʹnyj júmor",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "ви́сельный ю́мор"
},
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"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
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"tags": [
"common-gender"
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"code": "tr",
"lang": "Turkish",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "kara mizah"
}
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"text": "1931, \"German Falstaff\" (review of The Mirror of Fools by Alfred Neumann), Time, 16 Jan.,\nAuthor Neumann defiantly admits why he wrote this historical-romantic farce: \"Because I wanted to fight against the general and my personal depression, and because in hard and bad times there is always one tragicomic feeling in place—gallows humor.\""
},
{
"ref": "1971, Kurt Vonnegut, “Running Experiments Off: An Interview”, in Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut",
"text": "The term was part of the language before Freud wrote an essay on it -- 'gallows humour.' This is middle European humour, a response to hopeless situations. It's what a man says faced with a perfectly hopeless situation and he still manages to say something funny. Freud gives examples: A man being led out to be hanged at dawn says, 'Well, the day is certainly starting well.' It's generally called Jewish humour in this country. Actually it's humour from the peasants' revolt, the thirty years' war, and from the Napoleonic wars. It's small people being pushed this way and that way, enormous armies and plagues and so forth, and still hanging on in the face of hopelessness. Jewish jokes are middle European jokes. And the black humourists are gallows humourists, as they try to be funny in the face of situations which they see as just horrible.",
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"text": "True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. . . . While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, \"I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.\"",
"type": "quotation"
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{
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"text": "Mattis, it turned out, was meeting with Trudeau at NATO headquarters. Already engaging in gallows humor, I wondered if Mattis was defecting.",
"type": "quotation"
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"(American spelling, idiomatic) Comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of, and in response to, a tragic or hopeless situation."
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{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "絞架幽默"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "jiǎojià yōumò",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "绞架幽默"
},
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "galgenhumor"
},
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "galgenhumor"
},
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "groen lachen"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "hirtehishuumori"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "humour de potence"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "humour de gibet"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "Galgenhumor"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "grünes Lachen"
},
{
"code": "el",
"lang": "Greek",
"roman": "chioúmor anchonón",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "χιούμορ αγχονών"
},
{
"code": "he",
"english": "humor shakhor",
"lang": "Hebrew",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "הומור שחור"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "akasztófahumor"
},
{
"code": "is",
"lang": "Icelandic",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "gálgahúmor"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "humor patibolare"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "risata verde"
},
{
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "kōshudai-no hyūmoa",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "絞首台のヒューモア"
},
{
"code": "ko",
"lang": "Korean",
"roman": "gyosudae yumeo",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "교수대 유머"
},
{
"code": "lv",
"lang": "Latvian",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "karātavu humors"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "galgenhumor"
},
{
"code": "nn",
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "galgenhumor"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "wisielczy humor"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "víselʹnyj júmor",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "ви́сельный ю́мор"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "čórnyj júmor",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "чёрный ю́мор"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "galghumor"
},
{
"code": "tr",
"lang": "Turkish",
"sense": "comedy that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation",
"word": "kara mizah"
}
],
"word": "gallows humor"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.