Jump to content

Inherently funny word

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Sangdeboeuf (talk | contribs) at 07:53, 23 January 2017 (Copy editing). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Certain nonsense words may be inherently funny, according to a 2015 study published in the Journal of Memory and Language.[1][2] The study's lead author, Chris Westbury at the University of Alberta, suggests that the inherent humor of certain non-words can be explained by the property of entropy.[2] Entropy, in this case, expresses how usual the letters in the word appear to be: the less commonly they are used, the lower the total entropy and the more funny they are likely to be found.[3] According to Westbury, "Some non-words are funny, and they’re weird when they are [...] But there’s actually a consistent relationship between how funny they are and how weird they are".[1]

The idea that humor can be predicted by a word's entropy corresponds to the incongruity theory of 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who posited that humor is a product of one's expectations being violated.[1][2][3] According to Westbury, "One reason puns are funny is that they violate our expectation that a word has one meaning".[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Lewis, Danny (7 December 2015). "Finally There's a Scientific Theory for Why Some Words are Funny". Smithsonian. Washington, D.C.
  2. ^ a b c d University of Alberta (30 November 2015). "How funny is this word? The 'snunkoople' effect". ScienceDaily.
  3. ^ a b Shariatmadari, David (26 November 2015). "From whong to quingel: the science of funny words". The Guardian. London, UK.

Further reading

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inherently_funny_word&oldid=761498912"