the.com/humour
The social lubricant that lets you say true things and survive it.
means The ability to see what's funny, or the quality in something that makes it funny — including the dry, sly kind that smuggles truth past people's defenses.
from Comes from Latin 'umor,' meaning fluid or moisture. Medieval medicine held that the body ran on four humours — blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile — and your mix of them decided your temperament: too much black bile made you melancholic, too much blood made you sanguine and cheerful. 'Good humour' originally meant your fluids were balanced. Over centuries the word drifted from bodily chemistry to mood to, eventually, the specific mood of finding things funny — the last humour left standing.
- shared laughter
- Synchronises brainwaves between listeners, scans show.
- British spelling
- Keeps the u, loses the attempt to Americanise wit.
- comedy theory
- Mostly just truth arriving slightly too fast.
- ancient roots
- Named after bodily fluids doctors once blamed for moods.