the joke is on someone
1
7.2
- idiom
- Informal
:
la broma es para alguien
- And conservatives, the joke's on us, because when it all falls apart—and it will—it will be due to liberalism's nihilistic policies.
Examples
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They thought they could trick me, but now they see that the joke is on them for underestimating my skills.
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But the joke was on her.
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So the joke's on us, right?
Blog text (1) -
After planning to embarrass her friend, she realized the joke is on herself when everyone laughed at her mistake.
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He tried to insult me, but in the end, the joke is on him because everyone knows the truth.
Synonyms
42
4.1
Act in a way that makes you look silly or embarrassed
Surface Forms
Morphology
the + joke + be + on + someone
The phrase literally combines 'joke' with the preposition 'on', which signals that the joke is directed at someone, so a B1 learner who knows the words can likely infer that the person is the target or butt of the joke. However, the fuller idiomatic sense — that someone who tried to make others look foolish has ended up looking foolish themselves or that the situation backfired — is a pragmatic inference not fully predictable from the parts, making this only partially transparent.
Etymology
The idiom the joke is on someone comes from the image of a prank that turns back on the person who planned it: the people they wanted to make fun of laugh, and the planner becomes the one laughed at. So it now means 'someone who tried to cause trouble or make others look foolish has ended up looking foolish themselves'.