Word.ws English Dictionary

blackout gag

blackout gag noun: a rapid-fire joke in slapstick comedy.

Noun

blackout gag (plural blackout gags)

  1. A rapid-fire joke in slapstick comedy.
    • In some cases, Brooks could construct an entire sequence of nothing but blackout gags, as in the prehistoric sequence of History, which depicts the first artist and first critic, the discovery of fire, the invention of music, and so forth.2015, Henry Jenkins, “Mel Brooks, Vulgar Modernism, and Comic Remediation”, in Andrew Horton, Joanna E. Rapf, editors, A Companion to Film Comedy, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 159

Forms of blackout gag

pluralblackout gags

Origin of blackout gag

In reference to burlesque and vaudeville, when the lights were quickly turned off after the punchline of a joke to accentuate it and encourage the audience to laugh.

Questions about blackout gag

What does blackout gag mean?
Blackout gag means a rapid-fire joke in slapstick comedy.
What part of speech is blackout gag?
Blackout gag is a noun.
What is the plural of blackout gag?
The plural of blackout gag is blackout gags.

Words near blackout gag in the dictionary

  1. blackout cakes
  2. blackout curtain
  3. blackout curtains
  4. blackout date
  5. blackout dates
  6. blackout gag
  7. blackout gags
  8. blackout lamp
  9. blackout lamps
  10. blackout poem
  11. blackout poems

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blackout gag (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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