gallows humor
3
8.4
- noun
- /ˈɡæloʊz ˈhjuːmɚ/
:
humor negro
- Nacchio made his comments with a touch of gallows humor, drawing laughter from his audience during the serious discussion.
- a lot of gallows humor
- an attempt at gallows humor
There are things that there's a lot of gallows humour which some buy into, some don't.
- There are things that there's a lot of gallows humour which some buy into, some don't.
Examples
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I can also appreciate how different people psychologically cope with death in different ways, and that gallows humor is usually an expression of fear that cannot be otherwise coped with.
Blog text (29) -
Consider this gallows humor from the FT's Lex column in late September:
Blog text (33) -
Have you never heard of gallows humor?
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Regardless, the next 4 years are going to be a daily exercise in gallows humor!
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I can only guess what they'd think of the gallows humor that got my family through the past week.
Blog text (29) -
Call it gallows humor.
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Joe would have loved the gallows humor of some of these comments and the counter-comments of those so very offended, which are even funnier.
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It was the only aspect of typhoid that could be greeted with a certain humor, gallows humor, to be sure, but laughter helped at least those who had not been stricken or were not on their way.
Fiction book (1996) -
We do believe in populist rants, emotion and outrage, as well as sarcasm and gallows humor, but the facts and statistics must be accurate and cited.
Blog text (2) -
So my personal choice is to try to make the best of it by adopting a breezy, even silly-serious persona that makes a lot of gallows-humor type jokes or cynical self-deprecation.
Blog text (25)
Synonyms
3
6.3
A play or film that makes serious subjects, especially taboo ones, seem funny
3
5.3
Funny stories that use shocking or sad topics to make people laugh
3
6.5
Jokes about serious or sad topics that make people laugh
Antonyms
How Dark
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun 'gallows' (a structure for execution/death) directly modifies 'humor', so the core meaning — humor relating to death, execution, or similarly grim subjects — is compositionally inferable from the parts. Although it carries a nuance of dark/coping comedy, that pragmatic extension is predictable from the constituents, so a B1 learner who knows both words will generally grasp the meaning.
Etymology
Gallows humor may come from people telling jokes at the gallows, the wooden frame where people were hanged, so they could stay calm. So, it now means joking about serious or sad things to 'get through' a hard time.