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Glite Dictionary
Far Side

Far Side

1 6.0
A single-panel cartoon series by Gary Larson with dark, strange jokes
  • proper noun
translation icon : Far Side
  • The Far Side often features animals in absurd situations that make readers laugh.
  • Far Side cartoons

Examples

  • Once, he even chuckled to himself at a book he was reading, a paperback anthology of The Far Side cartoons.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Gary Larson's Far Side is going to be online for the first time.

  • Nothing says desert island scenes like The Far Side by Gary Larson, of course.

  • Many of the doors were plastered with Far Side cartoons and pithy quotations that made me smile.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • We learned the obvious things early on: they made us take Dee Dee's Far Side mug back home with us that first day, and the instant coffee we brought her had to be poured into a margarine tub.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • At first, when he was trying to accept the idea that maybe Sam would not be coming back immediately, he used to come in and sit quietly in Sam's chair, swiveling back and forth on the cracked brown leather, looking around at the clutter of books, papers, disks, and notes, reading over the collection of classic Far Side cartoons stuck on every available surface.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Gary Larson's Far Side is known for its surreal and dark humor.

  • Many fans eagerly await the new collection of Far Side comics being published.

Surface Forms

Far Side main

Morphology

far + side

As a proper name for Gary Larson's comic strip, 'Far Side' is an arbitrary title whose meaning (a comic series known for surreal dark humor) cannot be predicted from the literal senses 'far' (distant) + 'side' (aspect). A B1 learner who knows the constituent words would likely interpret it as 'a distant side' rather than as the specific comic title, so the MWE is not transparently derivable from its parts.

Etymology

The comic title Far Side may come from the idea of looking from the Far Side of life, a distant, odd view where animals and people act in surprising ways. That's why the name fits Gary Larson's single-panel cartoons, which show 'strange' and 'dark' humor.