the joke is on someone
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Someone is the victim of a joke or trick
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Ai đó là nạn nhân của một trò đùa hoặc lừa đảo
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: the joke is on someone
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Of course, they'd immediately jump to the wrong conclusion and think I was talking about a girlfriend, and I'd get some almighty teasing, but the joke was on them!
The joke was on him, we presume.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “the joke is on someone” mean?
Someone is the victim of a joke or trick Literally: the joke is on someone
Is “the joke is on someone” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.