ウケる: what the name of this site means
How ウケる (to get a laugh), ウケた, スベる (to bomb) and the 笑い family let Japanese speakers talk about whether a joke landed.
Ukeru notes · counts are from the current library (2,334 routines, 215,569 machine-transcribed lines) and update as it grows
A word your textbook uses differently
If you learned 受ける from a textbook, you probably met it in sentences like 試験を受ける, "to take an exam", or 電話を受ける, "to receive a call". The basic idea is "to receive". Comedians use the same verb for something else, and they usually write it in katakana: ウケる, "to get a laugh" or "to go over well". This site is named after that word. A joke that ウケた is a joke that landed.
The counts in this note come from machine-made transcripts of the 2,334 routines in our library, so read them as rough guides rather than exact figures.
ウケる: the joke receives the laugh
The logic is simple: the joke "receives" a good reaction. That shapes the grammar. ウケる is intransitive, so the thing that gets the laugh is the subject, and the people laughing take に:
- このネタ、ウケる。 (This bit gets laughs.)
- 子どもにウケた。 (It went over well with the kids.)
- 全然ウケない。 (It gets no laughs at all.)
You do not "ウケる a joke". You say the joke ウケる. If you want to say "I got a laugh", Japanese normally makes the joke or the bit the subject (ネタがウケた) or simply drops the subject: ウケた！, "It landed!"
In our library, ウケ turns up on 44 lines from 27 comedians. The lines are mostly what you would expect: whether something gets a laugh, whether it doesn't, and how much. It pairs naturally with intensifiers like めっちゃ (めっちゃウケた, "it killed") and with 全然 for the opposite (全然ウケなかった, "nothing, not a single laugh"; see 全然いい). Kansai speakers make the negative with へん, so ウケない becomes ウケへん; see 〜へん／〜ひん.
ウケ as a noun, and ウケる as slang
Drop the る and you have a noun, ウケ, "reception" or "how well something goes over". A few common combinations:
- ウケがいい: goes over well, is popular
- 大ウケ: a huge laugh, a big hit
- ウケ狙い: going for a laugh on purpose
- 客ウケ: popularity with the audience or customers
Outside comedy, ウケる has a second life as casual slang meaning "that's hilarious". Someone reads a friend's message and says ウケる！ or ウケるんだけど, roughly "lol, that's funny". It is the same verb, just used as a reaction rather than a report on a joke.
スベる: when the joke slips
The opposite of ウケる is スベる, from 滑る, "to slip" or "to slide". On ice, 滑る is literal. On stage, a joke that slips is a joke that bombs: the room goes quiet. Like ウケる, the comedy sense is often written in katakana.
- 完全にスベった。 (It completely bombed.)
- スベったらどうしよう。 (What if it bombs?)
- 滑っちゃった。 (Oops, that fell flat.) This uses the 〜ちゃった ending.
There is also ダダスベり, "a total, crushing bomb", a vivid word you will hear when comedians talk about their worst nights.
We won't give a count for スベる here. The search for it also catches the literal "slip" and unrelated katakana words that happen to contain スベ, so the number would mislead you. When you search for 滑った, check each line's context: is someone slipping on the floor, or is a joke dying?
A related word is 寒い, literally "cold". A joke that leaves the room cold is 寒い, and a quick さむっ is a common way to tell a friend their pun was lame. For the general "boring, lame" reaction, see つまんない.
笑い: the laughs themselves
ウケる and スベる are about whether a joke worked. For the laughing itself, Japanese uses 笑う and its relatives:
- 笑う: to laugh. 笑っちゃった, "I couldn't help laughing."
- 笑わせる: to make someone laugh.
- 笑いを取る: to get a laugh (more neutral than ウケる).
- 爆笑: roaring laughter. 大爆笑, "the place exploded".
- お笑い: comedy as a genre, as in お笑い芸人, "comedian".
This family is far more frequent in our library. Lines containing 笑い or 笑っ outnumber lines with ウケ by about 13 to 1, and they come from 133 comedians. Part of that is お笑い, the everyday word for the comedy world itself, and part of it is characters inside sketches laughing, or asking someone to stop laughing. ウケる is the narrower, shop-talk word: it is what people say when they judge how a joke performed.
For an adjective that means "funny", Kansai speech has おもろい, from 面白い; see おもろい.
After a comedy show, two performers at a bar talk about winning and check what the audience wrote on the survey cards.
Culture note Small comedy shows in Japan often give the audience survey cards (アンケート) to rate the acts.
けどめっちゃおもろかったって書かれてたな
But they said we were super funny.
Textbookでも、とても面白かったと書かれていましたね。Past 「面白かった」 becomes Kansai 「おもろかった」; 「めっちゃ」 replaces 「とても」, and the quote marker 「と」 becomes casual 「って」.
How comedians talk about a show
Put these together and you have the basic vocabulary for a conversation after a show. Simple examples:
- 今日めっちゃウケたね。 (We killed today.)
- あのネタ、意外とウケなかった。 (That bit got fewer laughs than I expected.)
- 最初にスベって焦った。 (I bombed at the start and panicked.)
- お客さんが笑ってくれて助かった。 (Thank goodness the audience laughed.)
The judgment often falls on the material: ネタがウケた, ネタがスベった. スベる can just as easily take a person as its subject (俺、スベった, "I bombed"; あいつスベってる, "he's bombing"), but putting the ネタ in the subject slot is a small, useful habit to copy, because it lets you talk about failure without attacking a person directly. For the words comedians use inside the act to call out nonsense, see the note on tsukkomi.
Using them yourself
- ウケる / ウケた: fine with friends and coworkers you are casual with. ウケました works in polite talk too: 先週の発表、意外とウケました, "My presentation last week went over surprisingly well." In neutral writing, people usually write 受けがいい rather than ウケる, as in 若い人に受けがいい, "popular with young people".
- ウケる！ (as "lol"): friends only. It sounds flippant to a teacher or a boss.
- スベった: safe and even charming when you say it about yourself. Telling someone else スベってるよ is teasing, so keep it to close friends.
- 寒い / さむっ: aimed at someone's joke, it stings a little. Friends only.
- 笑う, 笑いを取る, お笑い: neutral standard Japanese. You can use them with anyone.