Word.ws English Dictionary

brick joke

brick joke noun: a joke in a film, television show, book etc, in which there is a substantial gap between set-up and punchline, typically bringing back an unresolved plot point after the audience is expected to have forgotten about it.

Noun

brick joke (plural brick jokes)

  1. A joke in a film, television show, book etc, in which there is a substantial gap between set-up and punchline, typically bringing back an unresolved plot point after the audience is expected to have forgotten about it.
    • The invisible car is a variant on something called a brick joke: actually a pair of jokes in which the first sets up an unresolved element that returns as the punch line of the second, ideally after the listener has forgotten about it.2016 December 26, James Poniewozik, “The Joys of ‘Atlanta,’ Where Real Life, for Some, Insists on Being Surreal”, in New York Times
    • Genre conventions raise familiar questions about the role the bowling ball might play later on. It is in fact the set up for a brick joke.2020, William P. Seeley, Attentional Engines: A Perceptual Theory of the Arts, →ISBN, page 210

Forms of brick joke

pluralbrick jokes

Origin of brick joke

First coined on media analysis wiki TV Tropes, inspired by an older pair of jokes. In the first joke, a man throws a brick in the air in the punchline. The second joke appears to be unrelated, but then ends with a dog catching the brick.

Questions about brick joke

What does brick joke mean?
Brick joke means a joke in a film, television show, book etc, in which there is a substantial gap between set-up and punchline, typically bringing back an unresolved plot point after the audience is expected to have forgotten about it.
What part of speech is brick joke?
Brick joke is a noun.
What is the plural of brick joke?
The plural of brick joke is brick jokes.

Words near brick joke in the dictionary

  1. brick house
  2. brick houses
  3. brick in
  4. brick in one's hat
  5. brick it
  6. brick joke
  7. brick jokes
  8. brick off
  9. brick oneself
  10. brick over
  11. brick pack

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brick 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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