![]() My parents never bothered to come up with a family code word for my sister and I because if my mother had to work late for one reason or another, we simply stayed in the afterschool program until she was done and was able to pick us up. The letters 'le' at the end of a word is also often worth a giggle - or a wriggle or even a nibble.The notion of having a family code word so that children can safely identify who is actually here to pick them up and who is bluffing has been around for a very long time. For example the letter 'k' appears quite often in funny words: puke, fink, oink as does the 'oo' sound, as in boob and poop. Similarly, less common words are funnier than common ones.Īlso a few specific letters or sounds sometimes occur more frequently in funny words. Words with fewer letters that occur less frequently in English were found to be funnier than words with more common letters. Westbury's second predictor of funny words he calls "information predictors." These have do do with the structure of a word or its form. Caskey/Reuters) Information predictors of funny wordsĭr. Many of comedian George Carlin's seven words you can't say on TV have characteristics similar to those on the funniest words list. Bodily functions includes burp and snot insults are words like ninny and buffoon swear words are bullocks and jackass (among those we care to list) funny partying related words are booze and shindig and humour in the animal list comes from pooch and critter.ĭid we mention there are more in the list of the 200 funniest words at the end of this article? Keep scrolling. The study found there were six categories of words that typically make us laugh: sex, bodily functions, insults, swear words, partying and animals.įrom the sex category, boob and penis are classics. This measures how closely a word is - either in meaning or emotion - to the particular category is represents. Semantic predictors depend on the meaning of a word and the emotions evoked by that word. One of the conclusions of the study is that there are two ways to predict whether a word will be funny or not: its meaning and its form. (David Singleton, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic) Semantic predictors of funny words Of all the words in the English language, upchuck and slobbering are among the funniest. Who doesn't find puking funny?Īll three of these theories are reflected in a master list of 200 individual words that make us laugh the most. Don't worry, we're getting to them. The third theory is juxtaposition theory, and it suggests that people's actions sometimes make us laugh. You are not expected to slobber, but when you do, people laugh. "You blockhead Charlie Brown" is an example.Ī second theory of humour is incongruity theory, which suggests that less likely things are funnier than likely things. One, called superiority humour, suggests we find humour from making fun of people. The study is based on three theories of humour. The capacity to laugh is unique to us and higher primates, but only we have words. Westbury, who has an interest in the psychology of humour, wants to understand what it is about certain words that makes us laugh. No, not you. We just wanted to get your attention so we could talk about the purpose of this study. Some will make you slaphappy, others will make you upchuck, and one we can't mention because you may get your knickers in a knot. In fact, the word giggle, along with wriggly, squiffy and boobs are among the funniest words we know according to a new study by Chris Westbury, a psychologist at the University of Alberta. And there's a big goofy list below of the funniest 200 words in English. Science has determined through rigorous statistical analysis of 45,000 total words what the funniest words in the English language are, and some insights into why they make us giggle.
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