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tongue-in-cheek

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tongue-in-cheek

Jocular or humorous, though seeming or appearing to be serious. The president's tongue-in-cheek speech about the "War on Couch Potatoes" has been extremely popular on the Internet this week.

tongue-in-cheek

Fig. insincere; joking. Ann made a tongue-in-cheek remark to John, and he got mad because he thought she was serious. The play seemed very serious at first, but then everyone saw that it was tongue-in-cheek, and they began laughing.