Yet another funny neologism that comes to us from popular television is the word cromulent, meaning “acceptable or legitimate.” This word is often used facetiously, which is to say it is not meant to be taken seriously or literally (ie. For example: As one of the best players for Paris-Saint Germain, Neymar’s performance on the pitch is nothing short of scrumtrulescent. It is likely that scrumtrulescent was inspired by a combination of the word scrumptious, meaning “very pleasing delectable” and the suffix -escent, which typically denotes an adjective relating to the beginning of an action or process. scrumtrulescentĪnother word that was deliberately coined to be humorous is scrumtrulescent, a slang term meaning “transcendent and fantastic beyond description.” The word was coined on the television sketch show Saturday Night Live, where it was used by Will Ferrell to describe the performance of an actor. For example: Mint chocolate chip ice cream is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious it’s delicious. This silly nonsense word is used to describe something “great” or “extraordinary.” It is one of the words on our list specifically designed to be funny. The word was popularized in the 1964 film Mary Poppins, which features a song by the same name. One of the examples par excellence of a funny adjective is s upercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Now on to 17 adjectives that are too funny for words: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious We’ve compiled a list of 17 unusual adjectives that may elicit a chuckle or two.īut what about the word funny itself? Funny has a variety of meanings including “comical amusing” (not to be confused with the adjective fun, meaning “of or relating to enjoyment or playfulness”). To learn about some adjectives that are droll, amusing, or at the very least diverting, read on. They sound peculiar, look odd on the page, and some even have rhyming schemes that make them seem like mini nursery rhymes. Wriggly, squiffy, lummox, and boobs: What makes some words funny? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, published online Octodoi: 10.There are adjectives in English that are just plain funny. The findings appear in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.Ĭhris Westbury & Geoff Hollis.
“This makes sense, because lots of words that people find funny fall into more than one category, like sex and bodily functions - like boobs.” “It turns out that the best predictor of funniness is not distance from one of those six categories, but rather average distance from all six categories.” “We started out by identifying these six categories,” Professor Westbury said. Semantic predictors were taken from a computational model of language and measure how related each word is to different emotions, as well as to six categories of funny words: sex, bodily functions, insults, swear words, partying, and animals. The findings show there are two types of funniness predictors: form predictors and semantic predictors.įorm predictors have nothing to do with the meaning of the word, but rather measure elements such as length, letter and sound probabilities, and how similar the word is to other words in sound and writing.įor example, the study found that the letter k and the sound ‘oo’ (as in ‘boot’) are significantly more likely to occur in funny words than in words that are not funny. Geoff Hollis, analyzed humor ratings collected for 4,997 English words. Professor Westbury and his colleague, Dr. The purpose of the study was to understand just what it is about certain words that makes them funny. Here, we get at the elements of humor that aren’t personal things that are universally funny,” said University of Alberta’s Professor Chris Westbury. Image credit: Jesper Sehested, / CC BY 2.0. Westbury & Hollis determined that there are two main kinds of predictors of funniness in words: those related to the form of the word and those related to its meaning.
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