Pop Culture dictionary
yo mama jokes
or yo' momma [ yo mah-muh johks ]
What does yo mama jokes mean?
Yo mama jokes are cheesy insults making fun of someone’s mother. They generally put down a mother in the abstract for being fat, stupid, old, ugly, or the like鈥攖hings you should never say about a mother!
The practice of making yo mama jokes is more about joke-telling than it is about genuinely insulting someone’s actual mother. Please note, though, that some may take offense to the jokes because they make fun of weight, intelligence, appearance, or age.
Where does yo mama jokes come from?
We have been insulting moms since the beginning of time, apparently. Researchers found a Babylonian stone tablet from 3500 BCE聽containing a number of jokes and riddles. One wisecrack asks who鈥攐r what, as the translation is open to interpretation鈥攈as had intercourse with “your mother.” The punchline, unfortunately, has been lost to time.
Even The great Shakespeare himself also loved a good yo mama joke. In聽Titus Andronicus,聽when brothers Chiron and Demetrius accuse an interloping Aaron of having “undone” their mother, Aaron shoots back: “I have done thy mother.” Um, snap?
Contemporary yo mama jokes are closely associated with a Black male youth word game called the dozens, where opponents trade insults about each other’s family, with yo mama being a form of “your mother” in Black English. Sociologists have documented the dozens since the 1930s.
Yo mama jokes tend to mock the target’s mother’s weight, intelligence, appearance, or age. The jokes are set up with Yo mama so…
Here are some examples:
- Yo mama so fat, she fell in love and broke it.
- Yo mama so stupid, I said Kool-Aid and she jumped through the wall.
- Yo momma’s so ugly, she made an onion cry.
- Yo mama so old, she knew Burger King when he was just a prince.
A cousin to yo mama jokes聽are claims someone has slept with another’s mother (e.g., Sorry I’m late to work, bro, but your mother just wouldn’t let me go to bed). Yo mama jokes聽became very popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, so much so that in 2006鈥�07 MTV aired a show called Yo Momma, which was essentially a televised version of聽the dozens.
Examples of yo mama jokes
Who uses yo mama jokes?
While yo mama jokes are meant to be harmless, that still make fun of weight, age, intelligence, and appearance. So, be mindful that they can offensive and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
In telling yo mama jokes, people generally aim to show off their wits more so than intending any actual ill-will. It’s unclear why people enjoy the so-bad-it’s-good humor in online listicles and videos of聽yo mama jokes聽online, but they do.
Your mother, yo mama, your mom, yer mum are variants of the phrase yo mama in this joke genre.
Yo mama so dumb, they told her it was chili outside, she went and got a bowl!鈥�
— The Fluffy One (@The_Qiana_)
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of yo mama jokes like most terms we define on 亚洲网紅露点, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of yo mama jokes that will help our users expand their word mastery.