straight man | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)Amember(of any gender) of ateamofcomicperformerswho plays asupportingrole by helping to set upjokesandpunch linesthrough engaging indialogwith anothercomedianplaying a moreeccentricor otherwise more interestingcharacter; afoilwho plays such a role intheatricalcomedy.Synonyms:setup man,stooge,second bananaCoordinate term:straight womanFor many years Bud Abbott served brilliantly as Lou Costello's deadpanstraight man.2010, Caroline Graham,A Ghost in the Machine, Hachette UK,→ISBN:Recently he had successfully concluded a case featuring a poet who wore only latex, lived on liquorice allsorts and worshipped a horse she believed to be the reincarnation of Radclyffe Hall. And she was thestraight man.1982April, Pam Hait, “Sandra Day O’Connor: Warm, Witty and Wise”, inThe Ladies' Home Journal, volume99, page46:She was thestraight man, he was the comedian, and their audience was “standing room only” when they stepped up to the microphone.; Used other than figuratively or idiomatically:seestraight,‎man; for example, aheterosexualman.The committee consisted of two lesbians and astraight man.

Examples:

EN: - He's a good straight man.
ES: Es un hombre sólido y bueno.
EN: Throw me out a straight man.
ES: ¡Sigue recto!
EN: - He'd make a good straight man.
ES: - Sería buena pareja de un cómico.
EN: Oh, boy! Even with all these curves, this kid would make a great straight man.
ES: Esta chica con todas sus curvas bien podría ser mi ayudante.
EN: - The best straight man ever.
ES: - Es un hombre honesto.
EN: You may be a straight man.
ES: Puede que seas el serio de la pareja.
EN: You played straight man to a chimpanzee.
ES: Tú acompañaste a un chimpancé.
EN: Hey, what am I? The straight man?
ES: ¿Quién soy yo, un desconocido?
EN: I don't mind playing straight man to a vacuum cleaner. When the sponsor required me to appear before my public in a men's ready-to-wear garment, then it's time my agent started hunting for the escape hatch in my contract.
ES: No me importa trabajar para una compañía de aspiradoras, pero si el patrocinador se ha propuesto que yo lleve ropa de confección, creo que ha llegado el momento de que mi agente vea el modo de rescindir mi contrato.
EN: There's a straight man for you all the time.
ES: ¿Ves cómo siempre hay un papel secundario?
EN: You had me talking like a straight man.
ES: Me escuchaste hablar como un hombre recto.
EN: Okay, I'll play straight man. What's going on here?
ES: - ¿Qué está pasando aquí?
EN: I wasn't cut out to be a chauffeur a rented escort a straight man for your nightclub repartee.
ES: No fui hecho para ser chofer acompañante rentado u hombre serio para tu gira nocturna.
EN: I seem to be just playing straight man for some of your very delightful recollections.
ES: Y no creo que sea el momento adecuado para traer a su memoria recuerdos que puedan entristecerla.
EN: He would become just like his father, a straight man, a real man.
ES: Sería como su padre, un hombre limpio, todo un hombre.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).