How to Use in-joke in a Sentence

in-joke

noun
  • Fuentes came of age in an ecosystem of edgelord posting and trolling in-jokes.
    — Antonia Hitchens, New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2026
  • And the trust the couple set up with the name Olfert could have been a private in-joke.
    — Adriane Quinlan, Curbed, 13 Sep. 2023
  • Instead, the episode, full of in-jokes, served as a salute to his staff, who made up the whole audience that night.
    — Joy Press, Vanity Fair, 22 May 2026
  • My long-distance boyfriend often addressed letters with silly names or in-jokes.
    — A.s. King, TIME, 21 Feb. 2025
  • The movie simply wants to pay respect to their in-jokes and kvetching and observations.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 29 Jan. 2025
  • The very best of them contain Easter eggs and in-jokes that only the most committed fans will be able to spot.
    — Don Riddell, CNN Money, 1 June 2026
  • After all the meta in-jokes, all the celebrity cameos, all the cutaways to the big boss looming offstage, there’s hardly any room left for laughs.
    — Rebecca Jennings, Vox, 13 Feb. 2025
  • The film is peppered with dry wit rather than laugh-out-loud moments, and non-Norwegians might miss some of the cultural in-jokes.
    — Ars Technica, 31 Oct. 2024
  • None of these moans are intended to dismiss the importance of clever in-jokes and references to past adventures.
    — Richard Edwards, Space.com, 17 Feb. 2025
  • However, for those in the know, the in-jokes and references are a delightful surprise in this ode to the classic studio era.
    — Tim Moffatt, EW.com, 26 Jan. 2024
  • Scrubs one episode at a time, offering memories, behind-the-scenes trivia, and heartwarming in-jokes.
    — Josh Sargent, Men's Health, 14 Mar. 2023
  • Or casting various outsiders, or someone whose presence is kind of an in-joke within the industry.
    — Matthew Jacobs, Vulture, 27 Jan. 2025
  • This is the show, after all, that worked in a reference to an extremely nerdy Star Wars in-joke about an ice cream maker.
    — Katie Rife, Chron, 2 Mar. 2023
  • Or the in-joke nod to Beetlejuice, a comparative reference which does this movie zero favors.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 26 July 2023
  • The app’s user base skews young, and the content brims with references, memes and in-jokes the uninitiated won’t understand.
    — Tatum Hunter, Washington Post, 16 Feb. 2023
  • The musical, brimming over with Broadway in-jokes and phallic humor, doesn’t build so much as whip itself into a frenzy.
    — Theater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 1 May 2026
  • These worlds are full of specialized languages, secret social codes, and networks of references and in-jokes that would take weeks of immersive study to grasp.
    — Phillip MacIak, WIRED, 7 Mar. 2023
  • As an art-house in-joke, the title of Williams’ new sort-of-documentary, sort-of-funhouse-mirror-maze skips straight to threequel status.
    — J. Kim Murphy, Variety, 22 Sep. 2023
  • The title of the first full-length boygenius album, like many aspects of the band’s fledgling lore, is a playful little in-joke that functions as both a wink and a provocation.
    — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 1 Apr. 2023
  • The trio enjoyed in-jokes, road trips in fast cars (Picabia was obsessed with automobiles), and artistic experiments.
    — Sebastian Smee, The Atlantic, 29 June 2026
  • Weil, for his part, was playing a prank, propagating an elaborate in-joke that continued among mathematicians for decades.
    — Michael Barany, JSTOR Daily, 24 Mar. 2021
  • These liner notes help explain all the various references and in-jokes that newer anime fans will find utterly mystifying.
    — Ollie Barder, Forbes, 8 Oct. 2024
  • Now, reports suggest that schoolchildren have adopted the term as an in-joke, often shouting it out in classrooms to the frustration of teachers everywhere.
    — Lydia Patrick, MSNBC Newsweek, 23 Oct. 2025
  • The album is paced to flow like an old-school LP, with 12 songs in 42 minutes, splicing straight-for-the-jugular songs with detours and in-jokes.
    — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 27 Mar. 2023
  • On June 2, a Daily Mail article introduced this internet in-joke to the masses.
    — Leah Dolan, CNN, 14 June 2024
  • Correcting The Corrections has since become something of an in-joke for those of us inclined toward prestige drama—on page, and onscreen.
    — Brittany Allen, Literary Hub, 3 Apr. 2026
  • Throughout the 2-hour runtime, the crowd reacted raucously to all the major moments, but especially the Easter eggs and in-jokes.
    — Angelique Jackson, Variety, 26 July 2024
  • This film, with its bevy of cameos and in-jokes specific to the French arthouse scene, is unlikely to break the pattern, but the Fillières faithful will hold it especially dear.
    — Guy Lodge, Variety, 16 May 2024
  • But then again, nobody ever expected Lou Barlow and John Davis, the duo with the indie rock in-joke nickname, to be anything more than the sum of their parts.
    — Joe Gross, SPIN, 28 June 2024
  • Only this bit of low-ball theater is written and staged just for Denver, and the locals here who will get its hilarious in-jokes about the restaurant itself, which has been a local landmark for decades now.
    — Ray Mark Rinaldi, The Denver Post, 30 Dec. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'in-joke.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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