Joke:

What did one casket say to the sick casket?

Informant was a 19 year old male friend who is studying Engineering at Humboldt State University. He came home for the weekend and we exchanged riddles and stories and jokes, etc.

Collector: What?

Informant: Is that you coughing? (Laughs)

Collector: Where’d you get that one from?

Informant: The internet. I was procrastinating on my statics homework and looked up “funny stuff” on google. I thought it was pretty good – don’t you?

Collector: Yeah, I guess so, well, it makes sense. Any particular reason you remembered this one? Or was it just because you thought it was funny?

Informant: Yeah, it was amusing. It gave me the giggles.

This joke reminds me of something we learned in class, although it pertains more specifically with riddles. It was said that riddles are used by children in order to learn the meaning of words and this seems pretty applicable to this joke, considering it’s a play on words. “Coughing” sounds like “coffin”, which is synonymous to casket so in order to get the joke you’d have to learn what a homophone is and what synonyms are.