brick joke
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.11 in modern English
28
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
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.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
- "We’re also probably still on the hook for some final post-credits beat where the snooty french chef the penguins locked in a bathroom halfway through the movie comes back for some kind of limp, half-assed brick joke, but that’s probably as bad as it’ll get."