A pregnant pause (as in the classical definition, "many possibilities") is a technique of comic timing used to accentuate a comedy element, where the comic pauses at the end of a phrase to build up suspense. It's often used at the end of a comically awkward statement or in the silence after a seemingly non-comic phrase to build up a comeback. Refined by Jack Benny, the pregnant pause has become a staple of stand-up comedy.
Read more about this topic: Comic Timing
Famous quotes containing the words pregnant and/or pause:
“Many expressions in the New Testament come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant and practical texts. There is no harmless dreaming, no wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum of good sense. It never reflects, but it repents. There is no poetry in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the light of beauty merely, but moral truth is its object. All mortals are convicted by its conscience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Too often when you thought you’d be showered with confetti
What they flung at you was a plate of hot spaghetti
You’ve put your fancy clothes and flashy gems in hock
Yet you pause before your father’s door afraid to knock”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)