Meanings
- idiomaticSomeone is the butt of a joke or is experiencing a negative outcome, especially if that person was trying to make someone else the butt of the joke or subject them to the negative outcome.
“Guess what? The joke's on you because I'm going places, getting out of this nowhere town.”
2015, Lia Riley, Last First Kiss: A Brightwater Novel, HarperCollins, →ISBN3 more examples
As only a small per cent of the dealers use the word "Leghorn," and the ones who do try to use it can't tell a Leghorn from a mixed breed or from many other breeds, the most of the joke is on someone else.
1923, The Poultry Item, page 31Like Cole, we see through the penny-trick instantly, but the joke is on us, and on Malcolm himself, because we fall for the same joke on the level of the film as a whole.
2015, Randy Laist, Cinema of Simulation: Hyperreal Hollywood in the Long 1990s, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 232"Well, the joke's on you because I'm resigning from the gymnast team. And if I resign, so will my friends, particularly when I tell them why."
2016, E. C. Eliott, Kemlo and the Purple Dawn, Gateway, →ISBN
Cite this entry
the joke is on someone. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/the%20joke%20is%20on%20someone
“the joke is on someone.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/the%20joke%20is%20on%20someone. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “the joke is on someone,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/the%20joke%20is%20on%20someone.
Source: the joke is on someone on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.