IELTS Vocabulary Part – 207

Parody = when you imitate someone.

Sentence – Thus language begins to parody itself, and so does literature, as Joyce shows in the Ithaca section of Ulysses. 

Satire = ridicule or mock / make fun of someone.

Sentence – One genre it mostly ignores is satire

Visual humor = comedy that doesn’t rely on words.

Sentence – While the dialogue is interesting despite being slightly fractured, the movie also has a lot of visual humor.  

Slapstick = visual humor, usually falling, hitting, knocking things.  

Sentence – It was an almost slapstick comedy in which Stalin and his cultural henchman Zhdanov confront Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

Stand up comedy = comics telling jokes on stage.

Sentence – Whether you like stand up comedy, musicals or live music then you will be sure to find a suitable show for you both  

Observational comedy = giving a fun twist to everyday life routines.

Sentence – Foxworthy has plenty of other material, most of it observational humor about family life.  

Sitcoms = Situational Comedy (e.g Friends, Big Bang Theory) 

Sentence – Other cartoons are lifeless; plenty of sitcoms offer droll toddlers and clever menials, bringing down their betters with disparaging asides. 

Wit = comedy that uses a play on words or a ‘pun’.

Sentence – There was little wit or joy in the Ellen Tracy show.  

Crack a joke = to tell a joke.

Sentence – When he cracks a joke or whatever he does in front of the class, he just turn round and laugh.

Get  the joke / See the joke = understand it.

Sentence – It wasn’t that I didn’t get the joke – I just didn’t think it was funny.

Take a joke = to be able to laugh at a joke against yourself.

Sentence – He who plays a trick must be prepared to take a joke.

Do something as a joke = notdo it seriously.

Sentence – He seemed to regard the whole thing as a joke.

Raise a smile = made someone laugh.

Sentence – His Curmudgeon column which ran for many years in the Sunday Independent was required reading and was always guaranteed to raise a smile, he said.

That’s no joke = serious or difficult.

Sentence – This project is my dream project and not a joke, the boss shouted at his team.  

Laugh-out-loud = extremely funny.

Sentence – Millions shake their heads at the symmetry and laugh out loud.

A barrel of laughs = it was a lot of fun.

Sentence – He’s never been a barrel of laughs, but he is a competitive furnace, and that has rubbed off. 

To laugh all the way to the bank = to make a lot of money.

Sentence – The beautiful people issue sells out, and the publishers laugh all the way to the bank. 

To laugh something off = to laugh about it / not worry about it.

Sentence – Shane Spencer has heard that sort of talk and laughs it off. 

To have a good/twisted/dry/dark sense of humor = your ability to understand funny things.

Sentence – The poker face gives way to a great sense of humor.

A laughing stock= a person that everyone laughs at because they have done something stupid.

Sentence – Because of this Dick becomes the laughing stock of the news world.

the butt of the joke = The target of a joke; the person or subject being mocked or ridiculed.

Sentence – the bush administration was the butt of a joke told to the group the previous day by california lt . gov . cruz bustamante.