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With this helpful guide to humor, you'll never again be left asking, "Wait, was that a joke?"

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Absurdism

What it is: humor based on a belied that the universe is ridiculously unreasonable and meaningless. Contradictory sayings, one-liners, and paradoxes are all forms of absurdism.

Where you've seen it: Irish writer Oscar Wilde's famous absurdism: "Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much."

Caricature

What it is: an exaggerated portrayal of a person, often with distorted distinguishing features that might include mannerisms, speech patterns, styles of dress, or hairdo.

Where you've seen it: Comedians love to do caricatures of Hollywood personalities and politicians. Will Ferrell's caricature of George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live played up the president's malaprops and other verbal blunders.

Farce

What it is: comedy based on mockery, with broad exaggerations and stereotypes.

Where you've seen it: It's common in Mel Brooks's films, such as Spaceballs, and the movie Blades of Glory ( a mockery of competitive ice skating).

Hyperbole

What it is: conscious overstatement of facts for comedic effect.

Where you've seen it: It's often used in everyday speech, such as when we refer to someone as " older than dirt" or say " this box weighs a ton." Any time we exaggerate to make something seem worse or better than it really is, we are using hyperbole.

Irony

What it is: an incongruity between cause and effect or between what you mean and what you say. It's similar to sarcasm and is typically cutting or biting.

Where you've seen it: Science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein summed up irony nicely when he said, " The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."

Lampoon

What it is: to ridicule or mock someone or something.

Where you've seen it: Watch Chevy Chase's film National Lampoon's Vacation, which makes fun of the supposed "great family vacation.

Malaprop

What it is: a slip of the tongue that involves the substitution of a word that sounds like the one intended but means something ridiculously different.

Where you've seen it:
Recall when President George W. Bush spoke of finding " weapons so mass production," or when boxer Mike Tyson said, " I just might fade into Bolivian, you know what I mean?"

Parody

What it is: a literary or musical work mimicking the style of the original.

Where you've seen it: "Weird Al" Yankovic's renditions of popular rock songs, such as "Fat" a parody of Michael Jackson's "Bad". Comedy Central's The Daily Show parodies a news broadcast to satirize political and social trends and events.

Pun

What it is: a play on words, based either on different meanings of the same word or on similar meanings of different words.

Where you've seen it: Wannabe jokesters like to tell them just for the "pun" of it. And someone once said, "A pun is a short quip followed by a long groan."

Satire

What it is: humor with a point, usually the exposing of some kind of social or political issue for the purpose of reform.

Where you've seen it: Comedy Central's The Colbert Report.
Stephen Colbert is the self-righteous host who ridicules the actions of politicians and other public figures by taking all of their beliefs as statements as gospel, revealing their hypocrisy.

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Thanks for reading. Hope you liked it. Maybe you learned a thing or two.

Anthony Colby