Top 100 Dad Jokes

Dad jokes are the kind of lame puns and play-on-words that only a father could come up with. The best ones are groan-worthy and will have the whole family laughing together. From classics to new side-splitting gags, this list of 100 dad jokes is sure to make your eyes roll faster than a roller coaster.

While the most obvious reason dad jokes are so popular is their innate corniness, there may be other reasons why they’re enduringly appealing. For example, the predictability of the humour can be refreshing in a world where people are accustomed to an ever-increasing amount of sarcasm and meanness. Also, the simplicity of dad jokes makes them an ideal form of teasing for children. Dad jokes can be a gentle and safe way of testing the boundaries between parent and child, much like the rough-and-tumble play that fathers have been instinctively using to engage with their kids since prehistory.

Indeed, a study has found that the repetitive nature of dad jokes is particularly effective for teasing children, in part because it shows that the father figure is not afraid to embarrass himself, even in front of his image-conscious, sensitive adolescent kids. The result is that kids who are repeatedly exposed to eye-rolling humor develop a natural immunity to embarrassment, and learn how to respond in a healthy way to it when it comes their own turn. This is a valuable life lesson that is not only applicable to humor, but to many other aspects of the human experience.