MEANING
Using a serious, expressionless manner, especially to deliver humor without signaling amusement.
Use it for
describing a joke told with a straight face; writing dry comic dialogue; showing deliberate absence of visible reaction; contrasting absurd words with a serious deliveryNames humor delivered without an amused facial signal, allowing a writer to distinguish delivery from the joke itself. Writing functions: Dialogue / Restrained humor.
Words that belong together
- deadpan humor
- a deadpan delivery
- a deadpan expression
- a deadpan voice
On the page
“A remarkably punctual apocalypse,” she said in a deadpan voice.
He deadpanned that the committee had formed a committee to investigate committees.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- deadpan
- Past tense
- deadpanned
- Past participle
- deadpanned
- Present participle
- deadpanning
Usage notes
Adjective and adverb; also a verb, intransitive or transitive. Verb forms: deadpan; deadpans; deadpanned; deadpanned; deadpanning. Future: will deadpan. No routine adjective comparison. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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