Word.ws English Dictionary

bad joke

bad joke noun: a situation that is badly planned, or illogical.

Noun

bad joke (plural bad jokes)

  1. (idiomatic) A situation that is badly planned, or illogical.
    • Mayor Smith's new traffic rules were a bad joke.
    • Disarmament must be total, or it was merely "a bad joke".1938, Robert William Seton-Watson, Britain and the Dictators: A Survey of Post-war British Policy, page 172

Examples of bad joke in a sentence

  • But it is amusing to note that whenever the tables were turned on him he would mutter "Bad joke.1940, Kenelm Foss, Here Lies Richard Brinsley Sheridan, page 267:
  • " "A bad joke!" shrieked David, and in that cry I could detect all the ancient terrors of Israel.1986, Claire Martin, The Legacy, page 25:
  • It is this bad joke which, almost one century later, was still to be found in the government's campaign of 'We are Europe' from 1994.2002, Mikael af Malmborg, Bo Stråth, The Meaning of Europe, page 272:
  • This might be a bad joke for you and to the people able to fly back to Miami but this is not a joke at all to me.2002, Cesar Guerra, Hijacked to Havana!, page 28:

Forms of bad joke

pluralbad jokes

Questions about bad joke

What does bad joke mean?
Bad joke means a situation that is badly planned, or illogical.
How do you use bad joke in a sentence?
But it is amusing to note that whenever the tables were turned on him he would mutter "Bad joke.
What part of speech is bad joke?
Bad joke is a noun.
What is the plural of bad joke?
The plural of bad joke is bad jokes.

Words near bad joke in the dictionary

  1. bad humours
  2. bad influence
  3. bad influences
  4. bad iron
  5. Bad Ischl
  6. bad joke
  7. bad jokes
  8. Bad Kreuznach
  9. Bad Lands
  10. bad language
  11. bad leaver

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bad joke (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bad joke.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bad joke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bad_joke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.