humor
UK spellinghumour
Formshumors, humoring, humored
- 1The quality in something, such as a story or remark, that makes it funny or amusing.
The play handles a painful subject with gentle humor.
Much of the novel's humor comes from the narrator's dry remarks about his neighbors.
Similarcomedy, wit, funniness, levity
Oppositeseriousness, gravity
Note
Wit is its closest neighbor, and English has long kept the two apart: Goldsmith, in Retaliation (1774), concedes that "a Scot may have humour, I had almost said wit," treating wit as the higher praise. The word is usually uncountable, so it comes in amounts and kinds rather than as single jokes: a sense of humor, a great deal of humor, gentle humor.
- 2To keep someone calm or content by indulging their wishes or whims.
Humor me and read the contract once more before you sign it.
The nurses humored the old man, nodding along to his stories about the war.
Similarindulge, placate, appease, mollify, pacify
Note
Most often met as a disarming imperative: humor me asks a doubtful listener to go along with something for a moment, as in humor me for a minute and imagine it to be true. Said of others, it carries a hint of condescension, since to humor someone is to indulge them without being persuaded.
- 3A temporary mood or state of mind, especially a bad one, often brought on by some event; also, a sudden, unreasoning whim.
The long delay left the passengers in a foul humor.
He works on the novel only when the humor takes him.
Similarmood, temper, fancy, whim
Note
The mood sense descends from the old bodily fluids: if temperament was a mix of fluids, a passing state of mind was a humor too. It usually comes with in and an adjective, as in a foul humor or in good or ill humor, and it can name a lasting disposition, as when Francis Bacon calls King James "a Prince of a marvellous pleasant humour." When the humor takes someone, it is a whim.
- 4Either of the two bodies of fluid inside the eyeball, known as the aqueous humor and the vitreous humor.
Glaucoma often develops when the aqueous humor cannot drain properly from the front of the eye.
Behind the lens, the eye is filled with a jellylike humor that helps it hold its shape.
Note
Anatomy still uses the old fluid word here, nearly always with a qualifier. The aqueous humor is watery and sits in front of the lens, where it is constantly made and drained; its pressure is what a glaucoma check measures. The vitreous humor is a clear gel filling the larger space behind the lens and helping the eyeball hold its shape.
Less common meanings
- 5Any of the fluids of an animal body, especially the four cardinal humors of blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, once believed to control a person's health and mood.
Physicians of the period bled their patients to draw off what they took to be an excess of one humor.
For some days a fistula lacrymalis had come into my left eye, which discharged an humour, when pressed, that portended danger.
1763, Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz, History of Louisisana (PG)Note
A word from the old physiology of balanced fluids: Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy defines a humor as "a liquid or fluent part of the body," either inborn or acquired. Today the sense belongs to histories of medicine and to older writing, though medicine still uses the word for the fluids inside the eye.
- 6Moisture, or moist vapor such as mist.
At dusk a chill humor rose off the marsh and settled over the fields.
The ship's biscuits spoiled in the humor below deck.
Note
Here the word stays nearest its Latin source, ūmor, "liquid", from ūmeō, "to be moist"; the h crept into the spelling through a mistaken link with humus, "soil". The sense is now obsolete and turns up only in older writing about damp air and mists, so a chill humor rising off a marsh is vapor, not a mood.
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Origin
From Middle English humour, from Old French humor, humour, from Latin hūmor, correctly ūmor (“liquid”), from hūmeō, correctly ūmeō (“to be moist”); the h, silent in late Classical Latin, is folk etymological, from a mistaken link with humus (“soil”). The shift from “liquid” to “mood” is attributed to the classical system of physiology, in which human behavior is regulated by four bodily humors (fluids). The sense “mood” gave rise to the verb sense “to give in to someone's mood or whim” and, by narrowing of meaning, the sense “wit”.