straight man

straight man

1. A heterosexual man. I don't think there was a single straight man at the concert.
2. A male actor or the character he plays who acts in a largely normal, composed, or understated manner in order to set up or react to the jokes or gags of another character. I always considered Bud Abbott to be the very best straight man in all of comedy, the perfect and hilarious foil to the wonderful Lou Costello. I always play the straight man in comedies. I'd just like something a little more zany or out there for my next role.
See also: man, straight
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

straight man

someone who sets up jokes or gags so that someone else can say the punch line. I need a straight man to set up all my jokes. I'm tired of being a straight man for a has-been comic.
See also: man, straight
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.

straight man

n. someone who sets up jokes or gags so that someone else can say the punch line. I’m tired of being a straight man for a has-been comic.
See also: man, straight
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • man on the make
  • a man after (one's) own heart
  • a man, woman, etc. after your own heart
  • man after my own heart
  • candy man
  • man of few words
  • man of few words, a
  • a man/woman of few words
  • a man of few words
  • man of many parts
References in periodicals archive
While only a make-over show, it resonated with the viewing public because it mirrored something that was happening in the larger culture: gay men were rewriting many of the rules the defined the ideal straight man. Perhaps it was inevitable that labels would soon pop up to describe this new type of male who, while not homosexual, seemed in some ways to be "gay." Terms like "stag-hag" (a play on "fag-hag") and "stray" (for "straight-gay") were applied to straight men who hung around gay ones.
A stylish straight man might pick it but the rosary beads make me think this is a woman's choice.
James, on the other hand, figured it out, gradually letting all the straight men no even before he knew some were straight, and confronting the last straight man, Franklin, in a flair of anger in the final episode.
For 43 years he entertained generations as Eric Morecambe's straight man and at the height of their success the show pulled in 27million viewers.
Kinsey, and as for kissing another straight man, he says, "Kissing is kissing." In contrast, Peter Finch (who played the gay doctor in Sunday Bloody Sunday), when asked how he felt about his on-screen kiss with Murray Head, is quoted as saying, "I closed my eyes and thought of God and England."
It's the fact that the 33-year-old software developer is a happily married straight man.
Outside the theater his date told him that he seemed remarkably open-minded for a straight man. "That was my moment of opportunity," Sklar says.
Tanya is so obsessed with Sapna that she becomes psychotic on finding out that Sapna has been seeing a straight man, who has pretended to be gay to win her affections.
It was later revealed that Thacker, an HIV-positive straight man, had called homosexuality a "sinful deathstyle" and AIDS "the gay plague." Thacker turned down the post following a rebuke from the White House.
And a month after the school opened, they reported a scuffle between students and a straight man who allegedly taunted them.
By the time of the Grand Entry at noon, it was clear this was no straight man's--or woman's--rodeo.
American Pie (1999) In his first flick as "the Stifmeister," Scott is the butt of the straight man's ultimate gross-out joke: A glass of beer spiked with, well, a creamy additive.
So think of a straight man in your life who doesn't know you're gay or with whom you've never had a real conversation about your life.
I think every straight man has the capability to have sex with another man.