Crickets
Q.
You told a joke. You asked the audience a question. And nobody laughed. Nobody answered. It was ‘crickets.’ Where did this expression conveying embarrassing quiet, or a nothing response originate?
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A.
If you’ve heard crickets on a country night, you know that they are anything but quiet. It’s a sound many love, but one needn’t strain to hear the ‘stridulation’, or the chirps that emanate from male wings rubbed vigorously together.
How could crickets come to represent awkward silence?
It’s thought that the phrase goes back to radio, TV and stage shows where crickets were used to symbolize the quiet of an isolated night, versus the buzz of the day or the city. It was so quiet that you could hear the crickets.
When comedians told a joke with little response, they might follow-up with a: “Nothing? Crickets.”
Soon, the phrase came to represent the lack of a reaction, the leaden silence. Crickets.
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Header Art: Monika Lemeshonok
