humor

Pronunciation

• IPA: /hjuː.mə(ɹ)/ (UK); /ˈhjuːmɚ/, /ˈjuːmɚ/ (US)^[1]

Etymology

It is Middle English humour, borrowed from Old French humor (“liquid, dampness; a bodily humour”), umor,^[2][3][4] from Latin umor (“body fluid, moisture”), also spelled humor by a fancied connection with humus, earth,^[2][3] related to ūmēre (“to be wet”),^[2][3][5] cognate with Greek ὑγρός (hugrós, “wet”) and Old Norse vǫkr, damp.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Moisture; a body fluid: 1340 in Barnhart, the mid-14th century in Etymonline.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English it meant any liquid, and especially one of the four fluids of the body (blood, phlegm, choler and black bile) whose proportions were thought to determine health and temperament.^[2][3][6] From disposition or temperament it came to mean a mood or state of mind (1525),^[2][6] then a whim or caprice (1565), a sense mocked by Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.^[2] From the whim sense came funniness, a jocular turn of mind (1682),^[2][3][6] and the verb, to indulge someone's fancy (1588, in Love's Labour's Lost).^[2][3] The old sense survives in the aqueous and vitreous humour of the eye.^[5]

Timeline

• 1340 – a body fluid.^[2]
• 1525 – mood, state of mind.^[2]
• 1565 – a whim.^[2]
• 1588 – to indulge (verb).^[2]
• 1682 – funniness.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The quality of being amusing or comic.
2. The ability to see or express what is funny: a sense of humor.
3. A state of mind; mood: in a good humor.
4. (archaic) Any of the four bodily fluids once thought to determine health and temperament.
5. A fluid of the body, such as that of the eye.

Verb

1. To comply with the wishes or mood of; to indulge.

Word family

• humorful
• humorless
• humorlessly
• humorlessness
• neurohumor
• outhumor

Related words

• humorous
• humour
• humorist
• humid
• sanguine
• phlegmatic
• choleric
• melancholy

Usage notes

British English spells the word humour.^[7][5] Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories traces how the four humours were linked to the elements, giving the temperaments choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholy.^[6]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press