Dads are the kings of cheesy jokes. They may not be subtle and they definitely rely on corny puns, but when done right, they can make you laugh out loud. So, in honor of all the dads and father figures out there who love to chuckle at a bad pun, we’ve put together a list of some of our favorite funny dad jokes that will have you and your family rolling your eyes (or groaning) with laughter.
How do you know a dad joke? Well, if it’s a true dad joke, the teller of the joke knows how lame it is and still finds it funny. Dad jokes are similar to cringe comedy, which involves intentionally unfunny humor that is funny to the people who tell it because they understand how unfunny it will be for others. Dad jokes are a type of ‘weaponised anti-humour’ (Hye-Knudsen, 2021).
The fact that dad jokes target children is one of the main reasons why they are such a common form of humor. By telling these types of jokes, fathers teasingly embarrass their kids to get them laughing while simultaneously showing them that they can handle embarrassment. This is especially important for the adolescent brain, which is particularly sensitive to social and emotional processing (Blakemore & Mills, 2014). In addition, dad jokes also serve as a form of pedagogical play by pushing their children’s limits as to how much embarrassment they can tolerate, thereby preparing them for adolescence when they may be exposed to more intense forms of social and cultural embarrassment.