Deadpan

Deadpan is a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or body language, usually speaking in a casual, monotone or cantankerous voice and expressing an unflappably calm, archly insincere or artificially grave demeanor. This delivery is also called dry wit when the intent, but not the presentation, is humorous, blunt, oblique, sarcastic or apparently unintentional. The term "deadpan" first emerged as an adjecti... More

Deadpan is a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or body language, usually speaking in a casual, monotone or cantankerous voice and expressing an unflappably calm, archly insincere or artificially grave demeanor. This delivery is also called dry wit when the intent, but not the presentation, is humorous, blunt, oblique, sarcastic or apparently unintentional. The term "deadpan" first emerged as an adjective or adverb in the 1920s, as a compound word combining "dead" and "pan" (a slang term for the face). The oldest usage recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary comes from the New York Times (1928), which defines the term as "playing a rôle with expressionless face". A good example of this usage is in a scene from the 1934 film "The Gay Bride" in which a gangster tells a man on the other end of a phone conversation to "Give it a dead pan," (with the emphasis on "pan") so that the man doesn't inadvertently alert anyone else in the room as to...

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