# humor

Pronunciation: US say "HYOO-mer" /ˈhjuːmɚ/; UK say "HYOO-muh" /hjuː.mə(ɹ)/

## Noun

1. The quality in something, such as a story or remark, that makes it funny or amusing.
   - Simple: The quality that makes something funny and makes people laugh.
   - _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._
3. A temporary mood or state of mind, especially a bad one, often brought on by some event; also, a sudden, unreasoning whim.
   - Simple: A mood, often a bad one, or a sudden wish to do something for no clear reason.
   - _The long delay left the passengers in a foul humor._
   - _He works on the novel only when the humor takes him._
4. Either of the two bodies of fluid inside the eyeball, known as the aqueous humor and the vitreous humor.
   - Simple: Either of the two kinds of liquid that fill the inside of the eyeball.
   - _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._

## Verb

2. To keep someone calm or content by indulging their wishes or whims.
   - Simple: To go along with what someone wants so that they stay calm or happy.
   - _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._

## Noun

5. Any 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. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: Any liquid in an animal's body, especially four that people once believed controlled health and mood.
   - _Physicians of the period bled their patients to draw off what they took to be an excess of one humor._
   - _Black bile was the humor blamed for a gloomy temperament._
6. Moisture, or moist vapor such as mist. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Wetness, or damp vapor like 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._

## 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”.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/humor (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).