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Comment by j2kun | Hacker News Reader

The classic, "why did the chicken cross the road" also fits into this genre, but nobody seems to understand that "get to the other side" means "to cross over from life to death." Every time I explain this to someone they are shocked that they never knew this meaning.

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My understanding is that that interpretation is an urban legend.

Wikipedia attributes the joke to an 1847 article, which is phrased in a way that clearly isn't intended to have some deeper meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_did_the_chicken_cross_the_...

TIL, thanks!

You should keep smugly explaining it to people as if you didn't know about or otherwise have access to google before May 27, 2025.

That's a failure of the joke not to set it up -- one of the "top corners" of the square is missing. Chickens normally don't make an effort to get to the "other side" (as far as we're aware anyway).

To make the square you'd have to do something where the context of "the other side" means past life into death. e.g., "Why did the spiritualist put his ear towards the road? To hear from the other side."

If you cross the wrong person, they just might send you to the other side.

I don’t know how to make the chicken crossing the road use this meaning, but … well, there it is.

> Every time I explain this to someone they are shocked that they never knew this meaning.

You might have taken this as a hint?

That is funny. We finally figured out this double meaning a few years ago and I have been on the same quest since.

Seems arbitrary. Why does “get to the other side” mean to cross over from life to death. You’re saying it like it’s obvious.

It is easy to find references [1]. I always thought it referred to the Greek mythological river Styx, where crossing the river meant going to the underworld.

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/other_side

Sure, but it could also be humorous due to how obvious/deadpan the response “to get to the other side” is.

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