laugh line
1
3.9
- noun
:
remate cómico
- The comedian delivered the perfect laugh line that had the entire audience in stitches.
Examples
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The best part of the story is the laugh line, which always gets a big laugh.
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But I think he was specifically referring to what was the most chilling moment, to me, in the Republican convention—when Romney used, as a laugh line, the line where Obama said he wanted to slow the rise of the oceans, and the Republican convention broke out in laughter at the idea that somebody would take climate and climate science seriously.
Blog text (27) -
Everyone erupted with laughter when she hit the laugh line of her joke.
Synonyms
70
3.7
A short funny remark that makes people laugh
29
3.5
The last part of a joke that makes people laugh
27
3.4
The last line of a joke that makes people laugh
15
3.9
A short clever joke that fits in one line
1
4.2
The final funny line in a joke that makes people laugh
The last line of a joke that makes people laugh
How Funny
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense 'the part of a joke that provokes laughter' can be partly derived as 'a line that makes people laugh' if the learner treats 'line' as a spoken or written sentence, so there is some compositional logic. However, 'line' also commonly means a crease (and 'laugh lines' = wrinkles), creating ambiguity; this mixed predictability means a B1 learner who only knows the constituent lemmas may not reliably infer the intended punchline sense.
Etymology
Laugh line is the part of a joke or story that makes people laugh. Think of a comedian saying one 'line' that gets the biggest laugh — the words that cause laughter — so the phrase now means the key 'funny part' of the joke.