Complex Numbers

Walk the Prank

The link I'm sharing today from Mental Floss is over 10 years old, published on an April Fools' Day, and really, really short. Which is fine, because I don't have a lot of time before I have to leave for an appointment.

    Why Do We Call Pranks "Practical" Jokes?  

I saw the headline and thought, "Is it some reason besides that pranks are jokes put into practice? What have I been getting wrong all my life now?

Turns out, nothing. Well, except maybe overestimating the linguistic intelligence of Anglophones.

Every year on April Fools Day, you might find yourself the victim of a practical joke or two...

No, because I trust no one on that day, and I try to spend it in hiding. I call it Comedy Christmas, but the only gifts I want involve other people pranking other people. A prank pulled on me is, by definition, not funny.

But why are these jokes called practical?

I think I get the confusion. We use "practically" as a synonym for "almost," and "practical" as a synonym for one sense of "virtual", as in "Her victory was a practical certainty." Look, the biggest prank ever played on us is the English language itself.

Prop-based hijinks are called "practical jokes" because they require action—like slipping a Whoopee cushion onto someone’s chair—to be put into "practice."

See? I wasn't wrong, after all. Unless this article is a prank.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term was first used in 1804; before that, it was called a "handicraft joke," a term coined in 1741.

And it might be less confusing to go back to that nomenclature, except then everyone will expect their pranks to involve knitted fabrics.

If that etymology is not a prank, also.

"Practical joke" also distinguishes such pranks from strictly verbal or intellectual jokes, such as the one about the Grecian Urn.

That's a pun, which is the highest form of humor and definitely intellectual. But it works better in spoken English than written.