Word.ws English Dictionary

beyond a joke

beyond a joke prepositional phrase: increasingly serious or harmful.

Prepositional phrase

beyond a joke

  1. (idiomatic) Increasingly serious or harmful.
    • 'I may say that I noticed you in court today, sir, and putting one thing and another together—'
      'Quite right,' assented Carrados. 'It is about today's case. These post office hold-ups are getting beyond a joke, inspector.'1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries

Questions about beyond a joke

What does beyond a joke mean?
Beyond a joke means increasingly serious or harmful.
What part of speech is beyond a joke?
Beyond a joke is a prepositional phrase.

Words near beyond a joke in the dictionary

  1. beynge
  2. Beynon
  3. Beynons
  4. Beyoncé
  5. beyond
  6. beyond a joke
  7. beyond a reason of a doubt
  8. beyond a reasonable doubt
  9. beyond a shadow of a doubt
  10. beyond a shadow of doubt
  11. beyond belief

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beyond a 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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Cite this entry: “beyond a joke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beyond_a_joke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.