What it means
Used for someone or something that's great fun and properly entertaining. Just as often though, especially in British and Irish English, it's said deadpan to mean the exact opposite about a boring person, a grim event, or a joyless situation. The joke lives in the dry delivery, not the words themselves.
Usage examples
"That training session was a barrel of laughs, mate, two hours of clip art and Greg reading the slides like bedtime stories."
"Gran is a barrel of laughs at parties, last week she had the whole room doing the conga."
"The training day was meant to be dull but the new manager turned out to be a barrel of laughs."
"Cheers for inviting Dan to the team lunch, he was a barrel of laughs, sat there stabbing a jacket potato like it had ruined his life."
"Our coach trip to Skegness was meant to be grim, but Auntie Val was a barrel of laughs and had half the bus in bits."
Voice comments
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Where it comes from
The phrase is recorded in English by the late 1800s as a lively way of saying somebody was packed full of fun or amusement. The barrel image does the heavy lifting here: something filled right up with laughs. Later on, especially in Britain and Ireland, it took on that lovely deadpan sarcastic life too.
Other ways to say it
Editors of this term
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