Fart . Booty . Tinkle . Weiner . We have sex thesewordshave the power to make otherwise mature individuals express joy , but how ? And why ? Is it their connotations to puerile activity ? Is it the sound they make ? And if an underlying social organization can be find to explain why people find them humorous , can we then objectively shape a word funnier thanbunghole ?
Chris Westbury , a professor of psychology at the University of Alberta , believes we can . A few year ago , Westbury and carbon monoxide gas - generator Geoff Hollis published apaper(“Wriggly , Squiffy , Lummox , and Boobs : What Makes Some Words Funny ? ” ) online in theJournal of Experimental Psychology : General . The twain take apart an survive leaning of 4997 singular words hoard by the University of Warwick and assessed by 800 resume participant , whittling down the compendium to the 200 news the people witness funniest .
Westbury wanted to see how a password ’s phonemics ( phone ) , spelling , and meaning influenced whether people found it amusing , as well as the potency of incongruity theory — the idea that the more something subverts expectations , the funny it gets .
In an email to Mental Floss , Westbury said that a good example of incongruity theory is this video of an orang being dupe by a witching trick . While he ’s not answer to a word , distinctly he ’s tickled by the subversion of his own outlook :
With incongruity possibility in mind , Westbury was able to generate various equations that attempted to bode whether a person would find a single word amusing . He separated the Word of God into categories — insults , intimate reference , party condition , animals , names for body piece / function , andprofanity . Among those examined : gobble , boogie , crony , grunt , eructation , andturd .
Upchucktopped one chart , stick with bybubbyandboff , the latter aslangexpression forsexual sexual congress . Another equation set up thatslobbering , puking , andfuzzwere true sources of amusement [ PDF ] . Words with the letterskandyalso scored extremely , and the vowel sound /u/ appeared in 20 pct of words the University of Warwick study deemed funny , likepubes , naked , andboobs .
In the future , Westbury hopes to prove word pairs for their power to divert . The impertinent money is onfart potatoto break the top five .
A version of this floor ran in 2018 ; it has been update for 2023 .
