|
Reader question: Please explain “off color” as in: That joke was off color. My comments: Off color means literally OFF the normal Color. If a piece of cloth is washed again and again, its color may wear off, so it looks off color, i.e. pale and faint looking. Similarly if a person is ill, the color on their face changes, from the normal red and ruddy to, say, pale and bloodless. Or colorless, as people sometimes say. In other words, off color. If a joke is described as off color, on the other hand, it often means that it’s a rude joke, a joke that’s embarrassing to hear. Why is a rude joke described as “off color”, then? Guess. Yes, presumably the joke is so bad that it makes the listener go pale in the face. George Bernard Shaw wrote in one of his plays that some of his fellow countrymen’s language is so rough, rude and crude (coarse and uneducated) that they’d make a sailor blush whenever they speak. That’s exaggerating things quite a bit, for sure, but we get the point. When a sailor blushes (if sailors ever blush over anything at all, rude jokes included) they go off color – the normal color on their face turns reddish. In short, an off-color joke is one that makes the listener go hot red in the face or green, white or pale, either out of embarrassment, distain, astonishment or anger. That type of joke, of course, is inappropriate. | 
