[Ads-l] dad joke

[Laurence Horn]

I like that “as red meat a dad movie as” construction too.  Usually “as X a Y as” involves true adjectives in the position of X, whereas “red meat” is a nominal within the compound “red meat (dad) movie”. The key is that it can be interpreted as a scalar moodier as in “How red meat was that movie?” That seems borderline possible for me, but I note that there are zero google hits for “How red meat is that” or “That’s so red meat”.  (Tricky to search for sequences like “really red meat” without getting the irrelevant literal examples.)


LH

> On Jul 9, 2024, at 7:12 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Now there are also "dad movies":
> 
> https://bookandfilmglobe.com/film/movie-review-guy-ritchie-the-covenant/
> 
> "Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’, directed by, believe it or not, Guy Ritchie,
> is as red-meat a dad movie as you’ll find in theaters this year. It’s a war
> story, full of male bonding, with themes of honor, commitment, duty, and
> plenty of violence, though you don’t see a ton of blood so the action
> scenes feel somewhat like video games."
> 
> JL
> 
> On Sun, Feb 7, 2021 at 3:16 AM James Eric Lawson <jel at nventure.com> wrote:
> 
>> At least as early as 1961 in The Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, British
>> Columbia, Canada) 02 Nov, p 1 col 1, bottom. It might be a typo, but if
>> memory serves newspapers employed real copy editors at the time:
>> 
>> Dad Joke: Our Regular $1.85 Quality -- Now only $1.19!
>> Mrs. A.: "And what did your husband give you for your birthday,
>>  Mrs. B.?"
>> Mrs. B.: "He said it was something he'd always wanted to get for me -- a
>>  briar pipe and a pound of tobacco."
>> 
>> 
>> https://www.newspapers.com/image/492533761/?terms=%22a%20dad%20joke%22&match=1
>> 
>> Not my idea of the contemporary 'dad joke', but maybe a "dad's 'dad
>> joke'"? Fact checking has always been rather spotty in the popular press.
>> 
>> 
>> On 2/6/21 11:27 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>>> I did a piece for Grammar Girl on this in 2017. The OED’s earliest
>> citation is from 1987:
>> https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/what-is-a-dad-joke
>>> 
>>> Neal
>>> 
>>>> On Feb 6, 2021, at 7:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Wikipedia: "A dad joke is a short joke, typically a pun, presented as a
>>>> one-liner or a question and answer, but not a narrative. Generally
>>>> inoffensive, dad jokes are stereotypically told by fathers among family,
>>>> either with sincere humorous intent, or to intentionally provoke a
>> negative
>>>> reaction to its overly-simplistic humor."
>>>> 
>>>> I've been hearing this a lot for the last year or so: "Is that a dad
>> joke?"
>>>> The question implies, "That's pretty dumb joke. Why did you tell it?"
>>>> 
>>>> Essentially, "a simple quip or joke that is not very clever or funny,
>> of a
>>>> sort that might be told by one's father."
>>>> 
>>>> JL
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>> truth."
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> 
>> 
>> --
>> James Eric Lawson
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org