tongue-in-cheekadj.adv.

1933 Times Lit. Suppl. 30 Mar. 223/4 Shooting the Bull..is a tongue-in-the-cheek march through newspaperdom.

1937 M. Covarrubias Island of Bali xi. 375 A typical tongue-in-cheek Balinese answer to dodge a complicated explanation for outsiders.

1953 Spectator 13 Mar. 320/2 This..novel..seems too facile, too tongue-in-cheek.

1959 Times 4 Sept. 5/1 Though the piece was energetic and often exuberant it was certainly not tongue-in-the-cheek or humorous in style.

1976 National Observer (U.S.) 27 Mar. 10/1 I enjoyed Wesley Pruden's tongue-in-cheek suggestion..that every man, woman, and child in the United States be given a college degree so they ‘become equal’.

1982 Listener 16 Dec. 28/1 Angela Carter translated Perrault's fairy tales..with absolute fidelity to the understatement, the tongue-in-cheek charm of the originals.

1934 in Webster's New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang.

1976 Listener 18 Mar. 334/3 Someone told Muhammad Ali, tongue-in-cheek, that his book made him come over as a ‘deep thinker’.

1979 H. McLeave Borderline Case xi. 113 ‘You mean you're a spy.’ ‘Only for those people who have something sinister to hide,’ he said, tongue-in-cheek.