Inherently funny word
An inherently funny word is a word that is humorous without context, often more for its phonetic structure than for its meaning.
Funny words in English
Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know what words are funny and which words are not funny. Alka Seltzer is funny. You say 'Alka Seltzer' you get a laugh ... Words with 'k' in them are funny. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland ... Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. Cab is funny. Cockroach is funny – not if you get 'em, only if you say 'em.[2][3]
Two ducks were sitting in a pond. One of the ducks said: "Quack". The other duck said: "I was going to say that!"[5]
A 2019 study presented at the
Robert Beard, a
Rudeness and entropy
A 2015 study published in the Journal of Memory and Language examined the humor of
The funniest nonsense words tended to be those that reminded people of real words that are considered rude or offensive.[13][14] This category included four of the top-six nonsense words that were rated the funniest in the experiment: "whong", "dongl", "shart" (now slang, not a nonsense word[15]), and "focky".[13] To explain why these words seemed funny, the study's author said "The expectation that you've read or uttered a rude word is raised – and then violated, because in fact it's harmless nonsense. There's a sense of relief – of getting away with it."[14]
After removing from consideration the words that seemed rude, another factor was suggested to also be significant. The study's lead author, Chris Westbury from the
The entropy explanation also supports the notion that words with a 'k' in them tend to be more funny, as the letter 'k' is one of the least frequently used letters in the English language.[13]
The idea that humor can be predicted by a word's entropy corresponds to the work of 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who posited that humor is a product of one's expectations being violated.[12][14] According to Westbury, "One reason puns are funny is that they violate our expectation that a word has one meaning".[11] Violating expectations corresponds mathematically to having a low probability combination of letters, which also makes the word seem particularly funny, according to Westbury.[14]
To provide a possible evolutionary explanation of these phenomena, the authors of the study said that unusual occurrences may be experienced as indicating the presence of potential threats, and that humor may be a way of signalling to others that one has realized that a perceived threat is actually harmless. Westbury said "Strange as it may seem, that same mechanism may be activated when you see an unlikely looking word or a highly taboo one – you experience relief as you recognize that it's completely harmless – just a joke."[14]
See also
- ironichumor involving saying something that is meaningless or not funny when the audience expects it to be funny.
- Cellar door (phrase)– a phrase mentioned as an example of a word or phrase that is beautiful purely in terms of its sound without regard for its semantics
- Ideophone – words that evoke an idea in sound
- Linguistic relativity, and the theme that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet – explorations of how a phenomenon such as inherent funniness of words is an accident
- Malapropism – the use of an incorrect word in place of a word that sounds similar
- Mondegreen – mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony
- Nonsense verse – the poetic use of nonsensical words or phrases
- Onomatopoeia – a word that suggests a sound that it describes
- Place names considered unusual – includes names which seem offensive, inadvertently humorous, or highly charged
- Sound symbolism – the idea that vocal sounds or phonemes carry meaning by themselves
References
- ISBN 978-0-415-74506-2.
- ISBN 978-0-91619-900-5.
- ISBN 978-144221-336-4.
- ^ Berger, Ivan (6 June 2007). "Quacked humour". New Scientist. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
- ^ Wiseman, Richard (20 April 2007). "The truth about lying and laughing". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
- arXiv:1902.02783. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
- ^ Hutson, Matthew (17 June 2019). "Bejesus! A cockamamie AI can predict which craptacular words you'll find funny". Science. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
- ^ Fadelli, Ingrid (26 February 2019). "A new study explores humor in word embeddings". TechXplore. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
- ^ a b "Ask the Experts: Robert Beard on language". Bucknell University. 6 May 2010. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-61-526704-3.
- ^ a b c "How funny is this word? The 'snunkoople' effect". ScienceDaily (Press release). University of Alberta. 30 November 2015.
- ^ a b c Lewis, Danny (7 December 2015). "Finally There's a Scientific Theory for Why Some Words are Funny". Smithsonian. Washington, D.C.
- ^ a b c d "This is why some words just sound funny – and others don't". Reader's Digest. 13 February 2017. Archived from the original on 4 October 2022. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
- ^ a b c d e f Shariatmadari, David (26 November 2015). "From whong to quingel: the science of funny words". The Guardian. London, UK.
- ^ "shart". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
- ^ Kaplan, Sarah (2 December 2015). "Scientists have figured out what makes Dr. Seuss so silly". The Washington Post.
Further reading
- ISBN 0-517-58546-4.
- ISBN 0-8093-2097-5
- Westbury, C.; Shaoul, C.; Moroschan, G.; Ramscar, M. (January 2016). "Telling the world's least funny jokes: On the quantification of humor as entropy". Journal of Memory and Language. 86: 141–156. .
External links
- Cummings, Kevin; Fogarty, Mignon. "Grammar Girl: Words that sound funny". Quick and Dirty Tips. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
- "Bumfuzzle, Cattywampus, Gardyloo & More: Top 10 Funny-Sounding & Interesting Words". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 20 June 2017.