Humor . . . or is it Humour?

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“Laughter is the closest distance between two people.” ~ Victor Borge

I’m interested in what makes a phrase funny. What is humor?

I found the tiny pants hilarious because it was taped to the wall in my granddaughter’s apartment. So, I took a photo of it — these tiny blue pair of pants taped to this giant apartment wall, and of course, the note stating the obvious.

Perhaps you might find that only amusing. Other folks might laugh and laugh because it is a ridiculous sight. It is unexpected; it takes us off guard.

Humor is something that makes a person laugh or be amused. Humor contributes to a sense of well-being. — humor is, in fact, a major factor in achieving, and sustaining, higher psychological wellbeing (this from Wikipedia)

“The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours (Latin humor, “body fluid”), controlled human health and emotion.” – ( from Wikipedia)

Humor has been shown to improve and help the aging process by a improving physical health, improving social communications, and helping to achieve a sense of life satisfaction. I like to think that laughter is prolonging my life or at least making it more fun.

According to my Apple dictionary, this is the definition of Humor:

humor | ˈ(h)yo͞omər | humour British English)  noun 

1 the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech: his tales are full of humor. • the ability to express humor or make other people laugh: their inimitable brand of humor. 

2 a mood or state of mind: her good humor vanished | the clash hadn’t improved his humor. • archaic an inclination or whim: and have you really burnt all your Plays to please a Humor?. 

3 (also cardinal humor) historical each of the four chief fluids of the body (blood, phlegm, yellow bile (choler), and black bile (melancholy)) that were thought to determine a person’s physical and mental qualities by the relative proportions in which they were present. 

Humor: comical aspect, comic side, funny side, comedy, funniness, hilarity, jocularity; absurdity, absurdness, ludicrousness, drollness, facetiousness; satire, irony. 

ANTONYMS  seriousness. 

2  jokes, joking, jests, jesting, quips, witticisms, witty remarks, funny remarks, puns; wit, wittiness, comedy, jocularity, waggishness, drollery, repartee, badinage, banter, raillery; French double entendres, bons mots; informal gags, wisecracks, cracks, one-liners. 

3  mood, temper, disposition, temperament, frame of mind, state of mind; spirits.

The root components of humor are: surprise, contradiction, paradox and ambiguity.  We also need timing, reframing and juxtaposition.

 I am purposely leaving Humor as a verb out of this discussion.

“Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.” ~ W. C. Fields

Because I am a wordsmith, I like to see all the variations of a term. I like to know the nuances of words and to find the specifically right word for what I’m trying to say.

Writers use words to shape, to persuade and to make a statement, to play with sound and other wonderful word play.

That is what I’d like to focus on today — what some folks find hilarious, doesn’t always make other’s laugh. Why is that?

I remember when the Red/Green show was popular. My husband and I loved it and thought Red Green was really funny. We taped a few shows and shared with my parents who did NOT think it was even a little bit amusing.

We also loved to watch Saturday Night Live, but now it is too vulgar and disrespectful for us — even though there was plenty of disrespect going on during those first years of the program.

So, I conclude on this small sampling of evidence, that age and life experience has something to do with what we find funny. But, I am backed up by Emily Blatchford from the Huffington Post, who found that “older people found everything less funny across the board”.

My husband loves the three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy.  I hate them. I don’t find them amusing in the least. My daughter was telling me the other day, that her son loves fart jokes and is always talking about butts and poop and finding it hilarious.  I noticed that boys laugh a lot at burping and farting, but many women do too. Still, gender may be one reason folks find different things funny.

The best-known version of why different people find things funny was formulated by Sigmund Freud, who held that laughter allows people to let off steam or release pent-up “nervous energy.”

“McGraw and Warren’s hypothesis derives from the theory of incongruity, but it goes deeper. Humor results, they propose, when a person simultaneously recognizes both that an ethical, social or physical norm has been violated and that this violation is not very offensive, reprehensible or upsetting. Hence, someone who judges a violation as no big deal will be amused, whereas someone who finds it scandalous, disgusting or simply uninteresting will not.”

What’s so funny at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whats-so-funny-the-science-of-why-we-laugh/

Third, we laugh we wen notice an incongruity- that is, at the incongruity between expectations and reality. “According to a variant of the theory known as resolution of incongruity, laughter results when a person discovers an unexpected solution to an apparent incongruity, such as when an individual grasps a double meaning in a statement and thus sees the statement in a completely new light.” (from the Giovanni Sabato article)

“Humor is related to some kind of mistake. Every pun, joke and comic incident seemed to contain a fool of some sort—the ‘butt’ of the joke,” by Matthew M. Hurley of Indiana University Bloomington

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whats-so-funny-the-science-of-why-we-laugh/

We all find humor in discrepancies between expectations and reality. We seek to fit the pieces of the puzzle together — (To wit: “I was wondering why the Frisbee was getting bigger, and then it hit me.”)  Laughter is the public sign of our ability to recognize discrepancies.

There are several types of humor (probably more, actually)

  1. Physical humor (sometimes called slapstick: see Three Stooges) Slapstick humor relies on enduring physical comedy.
  2. Bodily humor or Juvenile humor (different from Physical because it is the farting, burping or other bodily functions that men and teens love)
  3. Self-deprecating (making oneself the butt of the joke)
  4. Aggressive humor (often relies on belittling others or making fun of another person at their expense)
  5. Surreal humor (very silly stuff —see Monty Python)
  6. Improvisational (humor made up on the spot. Often this is unintentional)
  7. Wit-wordplay (puns, Dad jokes and other ways of twisting language) and is different than riddles
    1. Sarcasm
    1. Satire
    1. Double entendre
    1.Topical wit (based on current events or trends)
  10. Deadpan comedy or dry humor (is all about delivering jokes in an expressionless, impassive way)
  11. Observational  (poking fun at everyday life)
  12. Dark humor  (this is sometimes called ‘gallows humor”)

“Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.”  ~ Edward de Bono

Educated people tend to find physical humor less funny than kids and teens. Yet some folks never outgrow their love of physical or juvenile humor. I also notice that our appreciation of humor and enjoyment changes depending on our mood or other situational conditions. We may not enjoy jokes so much at a funeral as when we are at a picnic. We may find things amusing later in life that we didn’t understand or consider when we where younger. So, age, experience, situations, gender, intelligence, education and probably other things impact our response to what is humorous.

Every morning, my family reads the paper while having breakfast. My husband loves the sports page. I go for the news of the day, and my daughter wants to know the weather report. My grandchildren don’t care for any of that. They want to read the funny papers. We all want to read the funnies. Which goes to show you that everyone loves a good laugh.

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