# humour

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

## Noun

1. The amusing or comic element in something, such as a story, a situation or a remark.
   - Simple: The quality that makes something or someone funny.
   - _The speech mixed serious points with a good deal of gentle humour._
   - _She saw the humour in the situation and burst out laughing._
2. Someone's capacity to notice what is comic in a situation and to get other people laughing.
   - Simple: A person's skill at finding things funny and making others laugh.
   - _Even after the flood wrecked his shop, his humour had the neighbours laughing as they helped him clear up._
   - _With his dry sense of humour, our new manager can turn even a dull Monday meeting into something we look forward to._
4. A mood or passing state of mind, especially a bad one or one brought on by an event; also, a sudden, unreasoning whim.
   - Simple: How someone feels for a short time, often in a bad way, or a sudden wish to do something without good reason.
   - _The long delay at the airport left the passengers in a foul humour._
   - _She paints when the humour takes her, sometimes all night and sometimes not for weeks._
6. Either of the two fluids that fill the interior of the eyeball, named the aqueous humour and the vitreous humour.
   - Simple: One of the two clear fluids inside the eyeball, one watery and the other like jelly.
   - _Glaucoma can develop when the aqueous humour cannot drain properly and pressure builds up in the eye._
   - _In a vitrectomy, the surgeon removes the vitreous humour and replaces it with a saline solution or a gas bubble._

## Verb

3. To soothe or placate someone by going along with their wishes or whims.
   - Simple: To keep someone happy or calm by doing what they want.
   - _I didn't think the plan would work, but I humoured her and agreed to try it._
   - _Nurses often humour confused patients rather than argue with them._

## Noun

5. Any fluid of an animal's body, especially one of the four (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm) once thought to govern health and mood. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: One of the liquids in a body, especially the four that people once believed controlled health and mood.
   - _The surgeon drained the swelling, convinced that it was full of a corrupt humour._
   - _Her physician prescribed a cooling diet to keep her humours in balance._

## Other meanings

- (noun) Dampness, or water suspended in the air as a moist vapour.

## Origin

The word passed into Middle English as humour from Old French humor or humour. Its source is Latin hūmor, more correctly ūmor (“liquid”), which comes from ūmeō (“to be moist”); the h crept in because people wrongly connected the word with humus (“soil”). The meaning moved from “liquid” to “mood” because of classical physiology, which held that four bodily humours (fluids) governed behaviour. From “mood” came a verb use, “to give in to someone's mood or whim”, and a later narrowing gave the sense “wit”.

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