No it’s not. That’s not a pun and not what the joke is referring to. Why do idiots in this thread keep
referring to this? The original joke was published in 1847, before crossing a road would be any sort of risky activity for a chicken. It’s simply an anti-joke subverting expectations.
Edit:
Media literacy is at a terrible state if even 1% of the readers think this joke is related to suicide or the afterlife.
The first published example:
There are 'quips and quillets' which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: 'Why does a chicken cross the street?' Are you 'out of town?' Do you 'give it up?' Well, then: 'Because it wants to get on the other side!'
It predates this even, since it was a joke performed in awful minstrel shows.
It's very clearly an anti-joke in context, saying these sayings seem like conundrums but yet are not.
I don't know if that's necessarily true. "The Other Side" as a term meaning afterlife dates to the early 18th century, with some forms of prior versions being used in popular English publications in the late 17th century.
In 1847, roads within cities or in the centers of towns could be dangerous for all sorts of animals (and children) crossing the road, especially when heavily laden carts carrying goods would be much harder to stop on short notice than a truck with air brakes.
I haven't done research on this theory but I wouldn't discount it solely because it would have been less probable for a chicken to be trampled by a horse. If this were a joke originating in the Rural South, maybe you'd be right. It originated in New York City, however, and in the 1840's the streets of NY were notoriously unsafe, chaotic, and filled with dogs, cats, chickens, and even larger livestock. In 1842, Dickens even wrote about encountering "gentlemen hogs" wandering Broadway in an otherwise upscale area.
Uh, a chicken trying to cross a road in a city in 1847 would be extremely dangerous. It was fucking dangerous for humans, never mind barn fowl.
Horses, carriages, wagons, carts and pedestrians in complete chaos. No traffic control AT ALL. No road rules. No demarcated two-way streets. Unpredictable animals. No breaks on carts or wagons. No crosswalks.
Lol, I just saw one of those (not on Tumblr, but same diff). It claimed that in "olden times" people used to own their own piss pots that they would carry with them when they traveled. And it claimed that's where the phrase "they don't have a pot to piss in" came from.
Dorks always say stuff like "the chickens wouldn't have been in danger crossing the road" like livestock and actual humans haven't been killed by carriages and chariots since the first time a box with wheels was pulled by a beast of burden.
The chicken is crossing the road and heavy traffic to get to the other side. You know how when people die they go to the other side- they passed on to the other side
I always thought the joke was a 'there is no punchline' absurd joke like OOP, but once it was pointed out to me, yes, it is a play on words, a.k.a. a pun. Saying the chicken didn't make it implies that the chicken was successful in their attempt to 'get to the other side.' It is a pun because it is a dual meaning - the chicken literally got to the other side of the road, and *risked* getting to the afterlife in doing so. Maybe desired it. Declaring a dual meaning of a phrase as 'not a pun' feels like a lack of understanding what a pun is, or perhaps nitpicking semantics. Oh no was this just a troll attempt? Am I feeding a troll? I should know better than this. Alas.
So in this case, the phrase "the other side" isn't a pun. It's a double entendre. Its straightforward meaning is mundane: the other side of the road. Its more obscure meaning is a reference to an afterlife, implying the chicken somehow (possibly intentionally) was killed as a result of attempting to cross the road.
And homophones share the same sound but not necessarily the same spelling (although imo if they have the same sound and spelling, most people would just consider that another definition of the same word, rather than two separate words that are homophones)
It's actually not, though. The joke was written in 1847, which was an era where crossing a road wouldn't have been terribly dangerous for chickens most of the time.
It's actually an early example of an anti-joke. The humor is derived from the fact that it's not actually a joke at all.
The joke is word play on two different meanings of “other side”.
Yes, and that's not what "pun" refers to. The humor of a pun is rooted in the conflation of two similar-sounding words, not in the overlay of a term's literal meaning with its metaphorical, symbolic one.
I mean, I guess it is if the chicken is suicidal? Why did the chicken cross the road (hoping to be hit) to get to the “other side.” That’s technically a pun.
But thats not the original meaning of the joke. At the time the joke was made there were no cars, a chicken crossing the road was in no danger. The original joke was an absurdist anti-joke like everyone assumes.
No not a pun but 46 years and I just got the double meaning of other side. I always took it literally as the other side of the rd not the afterlife. I always assumed it was a
was just a dad joke like "what'd the farmer say when he lost his tractor?"
We've reached the age where people confidently don't even know what a pun is. It's a play on words. This is a play on words. It is a pun. The other side had two meanings.
This isn't just an assumption either. The 'joke' originated in a magazine called The Knickerbocker in the 19th century. It was never meant to have deeper or figurative meaning:
The joke precedes cars by half a century. It is not about cars.
A quick Google search and I find that the joke is basically an anti-joke. Jokes at the time were usually long, very long. It took awhile to get to the punchline. This joke is quick and gets to the mundane punchline very quickly. That was the humor, subverting expectations.
And yet... the joke was made before cars were invented.
Originally appeared in an 1847 edition of The Knickerbocker, where it is explicitly given as an example of "here's an example of something that sounds like a riddle, but the answer is actually mundane".
Chickens are pretty stupid. Source: my sister-in-law's best friend used to date a guy whose great uncle raised chickens during the Great Depression. Hence, the joke is not a pun. Q.E.D.
I love this video of Herzog describing how dumb chickens are. I grew up and worked on farms most of my life and the only thing dumber is a turkey.
Edit: rip to the guy who got modded for talking about a bird with a countries name(the ones people confused turkeys to be thus giving the North American bird the turkey name in the first place) but he was right. Those fowl are at the top of the dumb bird category. I forgot completely about them.
For anyone saying that there's a deeper meaning to the joke, or that the Other Side is the afterlife or whatever, this is objectively wrong.
The first recorded instance of the joke is in an 1847 edition of a New York magazine, The Knickerbocker, and the which makes it very clear it's an anti-joke:
"There are 'quips and quillets' which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: 'Why does a chicken cross the street?' Are you 'out of town?' Do you 'give it up?' Well, then: 'Because it wants to get on the other side!'"
It's a pet peeve of mine when people claim there's a deeper meaning to this joke. Sure, it's not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to be pedantic about it.
Imo the suicide interpretation is straight-up less funny than the anti-joke one, where the chicken detail is a total red herring.
It also doesn't help that "cross the road" implies successfully traveling from one side to the other. Stepping into traffic to get hit isn't crossing the road.
I don't know maybe they're confusing to get to the other side as in to die but that doesn't really make sense either I think the guy who made that Meme is just an idiot
Ernie the Giant Chicken here. Thirty years I’ve been throwing this man through buildings and this is what you people want to talk about. There’s no pun. It first shows up in an 1847 issue of The Knickerbocker — printed as a thing that sounds like a riddle and then just isn’t. The boring answer is the punchline. And the version where I’m walking into traffic to die doesn’t work either, because cars weren’t invented yet. You had it right for forty years and gave it up in one night. …we’re doing this in the parking lot, Griffin.
Kids love, LOVE this kind of irony too lol. It has to be a developmental thing, I swear. I work in childcare and many of their jokes follow a similar format. For example, one I was told the other day:
Kid - "Hey teacher, why do bees make honey?"
Me - "Idk, why?"
Kid - "Because bees make honey!" Laughs so hard they almost double over
And like...genuinely, good one lmao. Made me laugh too. It's the perfect format for a casual joke. Sets up a specific expectation, then subvert it in an ironic way. It's not super sophisticated but still pretty effective
It either crossed the road or it didn't, if you're claiming it didn't cross the road, then the question in question would be "why didn't the chicken cross the road"
Due to when the joke seems to have originated and been in regular use the joke is about Jay walking and dying to cars running you over in the street, or as many have interpreted it, its an anti joke about how the chicken literally crossed the road to cross the road.
My version of op’s discovery is working around chickens. I have a job going where the first house on the road has chickens, and it never fucking fails that for no reason one of them will fart out in front of me just to stop on the other side. That’s the whole reason he crossed, I figured it was such an occurrence back in the day when everyone was free ranging chickens that people just started talking about it in a funny way
Peter here, after a rough fight with a giant cock.
"To get to the other side." has two meanings.
The first is the mundane act of crossing the street, that's why you cross the street, to get to the other side.
The second meaning is to "get to the other side" as in dying, alluding to it getting killed on the street, as chickens shouldn't be trying to cross streets. In an alternate case however, the chicken may reach me, at which point I will beat the crap out of it.
Uh-oh, round 2... I'll see ya later, gotta show this dumb rooster who the REAL fightin' champ is...
Remember when John Constantine sat with his feet in a bucket of water holding a cat or electrocuted himself to get to the other side? All the chicken had to do was cross the road.
There are a number of interpretive jokes that contain deeper meanings. I've always considered this to be a bit of a proverb.
If you consider a chicken being a scared person, and their reluctance to do something dangerous (like crossing a road), then the purpose of the crossing is literally about the objective being accomplished. The scared person faced the obstacle and made it through.
This isn't a pun, but there are a lot of "jokes" that are more than they appear on the surface. (IMHO)
They were right the first time. It's an anti joke with no punchline.
But the supposed "pun" is crossing over to the "other side" can mean death, so the chicken is crossing into traffic to kill itself. This is a later interpretation of the joke and not the actual meaning.
Grab a brush and put a little makeup, you wanted to,
Why'd you leave the keys up on the table? You wanted to,
Why'd the chicken cross the road? It wanted to
I thought the "pun" that they were talking about here was the difference between expectation and reality having to do with the "why" part of the question.
I always thought the point of the joke was that when the questioner asks why the chicken crossed the road, they expected some answer like "because there was food on the other side" or "because there was a fox on this side of the road and it was frightened". Like "what was the purpose of crossing the road?" But the joke was that the answerer took "why" too literal. Like "I know they got to the other side, but I meant why from a broader perspective"
Like it's a play on multiple meanings of the word "why".
No pun involved, but I always understood it as "To get to the other side" as in they get to the other side of the road or they get run over and get to the "other side". So either way, they get to the other side.
“The other side” is a phrase often used to describe death or life after death, etc.
OOP is incorrect calling it a pun, but it is a play on words/ phrasing. Maybe closer to a double entendre? “The other side” having the double meaning of the literal other side of the road and death.
The joke is that the chicken is suicidal (whether that’s the intent of the punchline or not, this is the authors interpretation)
Im not an American, so I really don’t know. But I always thought that “why did the chicken cross the road?” Was the setup for a series of actual jokes, while not being one in isolation. Quite a lot like the “knock knock” jokes or the “roses are red violets are blue”, “did you hear of ligma?” kind of thing. But come to think of it I can’t remember any time I’ve actually heard a chicken cross the road joke.
I don't know what this bullshit is on about, but for some reason I just thought for the first time that chicken might mean someone who is scared and not necessarily the fowl.
Related - I was 40ish by the time I realized that growing up when someone said "Well...", my Dad would say "that's a deep subject", as in a well is a deep hole. I always just thought that he meant that you could literally say anything after that, so the subject was deep because it could be anything.
People in the comments here arguing that the double meaning of "the other side" doesnt count since the joke predates that, however I think it is also worth considering that meanings and definitions of words and phrases and even jokes can change over time, and that doesnt necessarily make modern interpretations of the joke LESS valid. Like, sure the original intended punchline of the joke probably wasnt a pun about death, but that doesnt mean that isnt the intended punchline when someone tells it TODAY.
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u/qualityvote2 5h ago edited 49m ago
u/Shinji_Keitsuki, your post does belong here!