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The meaning of HUMOR is that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous : a funny or amusing quality. How to use humor in a sentence. Did you know? Synonym Discussion of Humor.
the ability to be amused by something seen, heard, or thought about, sometimes causing you to smile or laugh, or the quality in something that causes such amusement: He has a wonderful sense of humor.
- Overview
- The logic of laughter
humour, communication in which the stimulus produces amusement.
In all its many-splendoured varieties, humour can be simply defined as a type of stimulation that tends to elicit the laughter reflex. Spontaneous laughter is a motor reflex produced by the coordinated contraction of 15 facial muscles in a stereotyped pattern and accompanied by altered breathing. Electrical stimulation of the main lifting muscle of the upper lip, the zygomatic major, with currents of varying intensity produces facial expressions ranging from the faint smile through the broad grin to the contortions typical of explosive laughter.
The laughter and smile of civilized man is, of course, often of a conventional kind, in which voluntary intent substitutes for, or interferes with, spontaneous reflex activity; this article is concerned, however, only with the latter. Once laughter is realized to be a humble reflex, several paradoxes must be faced. Motor reflexes, such as the contraction of the pupil of the eye in dazzling light, are simple responses to simple stimuli whose value to survival is obvious. But the involuntary contraction of 15 facial muscles, associated with certain irrepressible noises, strikes one as an activity without any utilitarian value, quite unrelated to the struggle for survival. Laughter is a reflex but unique in that it has no apparent biological purpose. One might call it a luxury reflex. Its only function seems to be to provide relief from tension.
The second related paradox is a striking discrepancy between the nature of the stimulus and that of the response in humorous transactions. When a blow beneath the kneecap causes an automatic upward kick, both “stimulus” and “response” function on the same primitive physiological level, without requiring the intervention of the higher mental functions. But that such a complex mental activity as reading a comic story should cause a specific reflex contraction of the facial muscles is a phenomenon that has puzzled philosophers since Plato. There is no clear-cut, predictable response that would tell a lecturer whether he has succeeded in convincing his listeners; but, when he is telling a joke, laughter serves as an experimental test. Humour is the only form of communication in which a stimulus on a high level of complexity produces a stereotyped, predictable response on the physiological reflex level. Thus the response can be used as an indicator for the presence of the elusive quality that is called humour—as the click of the Geiger counter is used to indicate the presence of radioactivity. Such a procedure is not possible in any other form of art; and, since the step from the sublime to the ridiculous is reversible, the study of humour provides clues for the study of creativity in general.
The range of laughter-provoking experiences is enormous, from physical tickling to mental titillations of the most varied kinds. There is unity in this variety, however, a common denominator of a specific and specifiable pattern that reflects the “logic” or “grammar” of humour, as it were. A few examples will help to unravel that pattern.
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•1. A masochist is a person who likes a cold shower in the morning so he takes a hot one.
•2. An English lady, on being asked by a friend what she thought of her departed husband’s whereabouts: “Well, I suppose the poor soul is enjoying eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn’t talk about such unpleasant subjects.”
•3. A doctor comforts his patient: “You have a very serious disease. Of 10 persons who catch it, only one survives. It is lucky you came to me, for I have recently had nine patients with this disease and they all died of it.”
Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff. Humor, the capacity to express or perceive what's funny, is both a source of entertainment and a means of coping with...
HUMOUR definition: 1. the ability to find things funny, the way in which people see that some things are funny, or the…. Learn more.
noun. a comic, absurd, or incongruous quality causing amusement: the humor of a situation. the faculty of perceiving what is amusing or comical: He is completely without humor. an instance of being or attempting to be comical or amusing; something humorous: The humor in his joke eluded the audience.
Humour (Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. 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.
