![]() ![]() ![]() the earliest seems to date to 1859 and it is a variant: I have not been able to dig up a single version from the early 1850s. The joke proved rather rare in the years that followed. ![]() I think here at the beginning we have the key to appreciating why-did-the-chicken: it was launched onto the world as a conundrum or a riddle, but actually it is a joke – in other words you don’t get the expected pun so beloved of nineteenth-century English speakers (and found today in Christmas crackers), you are made to realise that you are over-complicating simple things. Note that at this date there is no sense that it was commonly known, at least not to the Knickerbocker’s long-suffering joke editor (what a hellish job). The chicken joke is caught in aspic in that moment, in the middle of the nineteenth century. ‘M.’ has sent in a selection of ‘conundrums’ and the tired editor quotes one to show how bad they are: luckily for us it is ours. Of such is this: ‘Why does a chicken cross the street?’… ‘Because it wants to get to the other side.’ There are ‘quips and quillets’ which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. 283) (a New York magazine).Ĭonundrums we do not greatly affect and must therefore be excused in the eyes of ‘M.’ for declining his extensive batch. The earliest reference that has been found so far (full credit to an anonymous editor at Wikipedia here) dates to 1847 and the Knickerbocker (vol 29, p. ![]() Now, just how old and where does it come from? Knickerbocker Glory ‘Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? To get to the other side.’ It is one of the most tedious jokes in history, but it is also one of the oldest in continuous use. ![]()
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