Word.ws English Dictionary

running gag

running gag noun: an ongoing joke, one that is regularly repeated or continued.

Noun

running gag (plural running gags)

  1. An ongoing joke, one that is regularly repeated or continued.
    • Some groaners are converted into running gags, as when Joel and his brother (Max Greenfield) get in a duel of parting, one-last-thing-before-you-go affirmations.2014 June 26, A. A. Dowd, “Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler Spoof Rom-com Clichés in They Came Together”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 07 Dec 2017
    Synonyms:
    running joke

Synonyms of running gag

Forms of running gag

pluralrunning gags

Questions about running gag

What does running gag mean?
Running gag means an ongoing joke, one that is regularly repeated or continued.
What part of speech is running gag?
Running gag is a noun.
What is the plural of running gag?
The plural of running gag is running gags.

Words near running gag in the dictionary

  1. running for it
  2. running for one's life
  3. running for the exercise
  4. running for the hills
  5. running from the tongue
  6. running gag
  7. running gags
  8. running game
  9. running game on
  10. running games
  11. running gear

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: running 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “running gag.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/running_gag. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.