There are others who think the joke is actually a suicide joke with ' The Other Side' referring to the afterlife.Įither way, of course, these days everyone and their grandmother has heard it a million times ever since they were far too young to grasp the concept of humor, rendering the joke itself a case of 'Seinfeld' Is Unfunny. 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!'' The music critic Gary Giddins in the Ken Burns documentary Jazz states that the joke was spread through the United States by Minstrel Shows (a form of entertainment consisting of skits, musical performances, and variety acts depicting people of African descent, usually caricatured as buffoonish, lazy, and happy-go-lucky) beginning in the 1840s as one of the first national jokes. The joke appeared in the 1847 edition of the magazine The Knickerbocker: 'There are 'quips and quillets' which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none.

The joke is seen as an example of Anti-Humor, in which the listener might expect a traditional punchline, but instead gets a simple statement of fact. ( Why did the duck cross the road? It was the chicken's day off.) Or in an alien culture, someone might ask ' why did the Smeerp cross the road?' There are also times where an actual chicken may be involved.Ī common variant is to simply replace the chicken with another creature. One of the oldest Stock Jokes ever told, this joke involves the classic setup: 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' Most often, this leads to the classic punchline: 'To get to the other side', though the punchline may vary sometimes.

Bobby Santiago to a chicken, The Loud House, 'Undie Pressure'

Why did the chicken crossy the road