visual joke
- noun
- /ˈvɪʒuəl dʒoʊk/
:
broma visual
- But here the apparent reduction of size paradoxically leads to a reaffirmation of the sheer largeness of the bird; the tiny alligators seem like a visual joke added to underscore Audon's own technical prowess.
Examples
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In his latest art exhibit, there was a stunning visual joke involving a painting of a cat looking surprised at an empty fish bowl.
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The visual joke featured a cartoon character slipping on a banana peel, making everyone laugh without any dialogue.
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And then you can get these visual jokes that he's put in there clear.
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The clock in "The Killers" tells two times because it is a visual joke about the duplicity of time, a sign of the text's double temporality.
Academic text (2017) -
There are some jarring tonal shifts and some visual jokes that seem somehow out of place, but he shows a sure hand in working with actors and getting what he needs from them.
Blog text (23) -
The film relied heavily on visual jokes, like the scene where a character accidentally wore his shirt backward without realizing it.
Synonyms
2
6.4
A joke you see that makes people laugh without words
How Visual
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'visual' specifies the modality of a 'joke', so a learner who knows both words can infer it is a joke conveyed through visual elements rather than words. This adjective+noun formation and the concept of modality-marked nouns are cross-linguistically common, making the phrase immediately understandable to B1 learners.
Etymology
Visual joke comes from old silent movies and cartoons where the laugh came from what you saw, not from words. Here the picture is the funny part: visual means 'seen' and joke means 'funny thing', so it means a joke told by images rather than by words.