humor

Dictionary: hu·mor   (hyū'mər)

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1. The quality that makes something laughable or amusing; funniness: could not see the humor of the situation.
2. That which is intended to induce laughter or amusement: a writer skilled at crafting humor.
3. The ability to perceive, enjoy, or express what is amusing, comical, incongruous, or absurd. See synonyms at wit¹.
4. One of the four fluids of the body, blood, phlegm, choler, and black bile, whose relative proportions were thought in ancient and medieval physiology to determine a person's disposition and general health.
5. Physiology.
   1. A body fluid, such as blood, lymph, or bile.
   2. Aqueous humor.
   3. Vitreous humor.
6. A person's characteristic disposition or temperament: a boy of sullen humor.
7. An often temporary state of mind; a mood: I'm in no humor to argue.
8. 1. A sudden, unanticipated whim. See synonyms at mood¹.
   2. Capricious or peculiar behavior.

1. To comply with the wishes or ideas of; indulge.
2. To adapt or accommodate oneself to. See synonyms at pamper.

out of humor

1. In a bad mood; irritable.

[Middle English, fluid, from Old French umor, from Latin ūmor, hūmor.]

noun

1. The quality of being laughable or comical: comedy, comicality, comicalness, drollery, drollness, farcicality, funniness, humorousness, jocoseness, jocosity, jocularity, ludicrousness, ridiculousness, wit, wittiness, zaniness. See laughter.
2. A person's customary manner of emotional response: complexion, disposition, nature, temper, temperament. See be.
3. A temporary state of mind or feeling: frame of mind, mood, spirit (used in plural), temper, vein. See feelings.
4. An impulsive, often illogical turn of mind: bee, boutade, caprice, conceit, fancy, freak, impulse, megrim, notion, vagary, whim, whimsy. Idioms: bee in one's bonnet. See thoughts.

verb

To comply with the wishes or ideas of (another): cater, gratify, indulge. See resist/yield.

Definition: comedy, funniness
Antonyms: depression, drama, sadness, seriousness, tragedy, unhappiness

Humor is the name given to the psychic process that operates in the field of the preconscious, based on the dynamic interrelation between the agencies of the mind, and akin to a defense mechanism, consisting of an unexpected re-evaluation of the demands of reality that reverses their painful emotional tone and thereby offers to the triumphant ego that yield of pleasure which enables it to demonstrate its invulnerable narcissism.

Freud's first insight into the mechanism of this phenomenon, which was entrenched in the family and community life in which he was deeply involved, came in the last pages of Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905c). It was, in fact, on the death of his father that he started to collect Jewish jokes (Witze) and, at the insistence of Wilhelm Fliess, developed a theory to explain them, bringing out how their very condition of possibility lay in the activity of this process within the humorist. Although he pointed out (1908c) the kinship between this process and children's games, he did not elucidate it in metapsychological terms until the brief article of 1927 (1927d).

Unlike comedy and wit, or even irony, all of which aim at the satisfaction of erotic or aggressive drives and necessitate, for this purpose, the effective presence of a real third party, humor involves a strictly intrapsychic process of indirection whose purpose is economic, viz., sparing the subject from the painful feelings (pity, irritation, anger, suffering, disgust, tenderness, horror, etc.) that the situation ought to occasion. The energy of these feelings is thus diverted and transformed into the moderate but triumphant pleasure (so different from the explosion of hilarity) that is expressed in the smile of humor. As a result, the humorist reaffirms his narcissistic invulnerability, assuring himself that nothing traumatic can affect him, and that he can in fact find in such things a yield of pleasure.

This being the case, although humor is an autonomous process, it is encountered most often mixed with other forms of the comic, in which it finds a mode of expression, with which it is often confused, and for which it intervenes as a mechanism that inhibits any emotions that would obstruct its development.

Nonetheless, Freud considers humor as a particularly salubrious activity, making of it the rarest and most elaborate form of defense. Yet its benefits turn out in fact to be costly, necessitating a large outlay, since while this economic process, being neither denial nor repression, leads to a reversal of emotional tone, it does not eliminate the painful representation. Freud explained this as the result of a new topographical arrangement: the humorist takes the psychic emphasis off the ego and displaces it onto his superego: "Look! here is the world, which seems so dangerous! It is nothing but a game for children—just worth making a jest about!" (1927d, p. 166).

In fact, humor leads to a set of notions whose origin, nature, history, and development thus all need to be re-examined, as they all indubitably hark back to the genesis of the ideal psychic agencies and their function in establishing a humorous attitude towards reality. All of these dimensions, indeed—whether it be the invulnerable narcissistic kernel of which the humorist is a living testimony, the exercise of the reality principle, the experience of pain, the mechanism of illusion, or the alchemy of the emotions that it produces—invite reflection on the precocious relations that were formed between the humorist and his mother who bequeathed to him this precious gift (Donnet, J.-L., 1997; Kameniak, J.-P., 1998). For example, we need to reflect—as did Freud—on the enigma of the "essence of the Super-ego," a superego that manifests itself in an atypical form of functioning: as a reassuring and consoling agency—even a maternal one—that is barely consistent with the severity usually associated with it, whether in the commands it issues or in its role as representative and guardian of the reality principle.

While humor was initially considered as a variety of the comic genre, in the same way as wit (with which it is often confused), Freud early on endeavored to distinguish it through topographical localization, the kind of gratification it affords, the absence of the need for a third person, and, finally, the specific nature of the process, all of which make it a character disposition or trait rather than a random production. Consequently, over and above the defensive use that has been classically recognized and associated with the process of humor, we might want to ask whether it could have a specific function of working-through, very different from the relaxation which is brought about by the comic effect, thus tempering any excess of emotion; how any real "work of humor" is actually accomplished; and what its nature might be. Whereas, when faced with the hostility of events, the risk of trauma may appear to be significant, humor does allow the subject to maintain the integrity of his psychic functions and their availability while also acknowledging the "disruptive" nature of reality. We can surely envisage the possibility (Bergeret, 1973) that there are hints of a working-through involved in humor, or, at the very least, the establishment of the framework needed for any possible integration of the sufferings inflicted on the subject.

Nevertheless, it cannot escape notice that there has been a general lack of interest and a relative silence on the part of contemporary analysts when it comes to this subject, apparently so frivolous though in fact it raises fundamental questions. Up until now, analytic literature on this theme has scarcely extended beyond a few scattered remarks or occasional articles, and most of them use humor as a generic category succeeding that of "the comic" proposed by Freud. Consequently, they are more likely to discuss the techniques and procedures of the modes of expression to which humor resorts than to examine the process of humor itself.

Bibliography

Bergeret, Jean. (1973). Pour une métapyschologie de l'humour. Revue française de psychanalyse, 37,4.

Donnet, Jean-Luc. (1997). L'humoriste et sa croyance. Revue française de psychanalyse, 61,3.

Gay, Peter. (1990). Reading Freud: Explorations and entertainments. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kamieniak, Jean-Pierre. (1998). Freud, un enfant de l'humour. Lausanne-Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé.

Shentoub, Salem A. et al. (1989). L'Humour dans l'oeuvre de Freud. Paris: Two Cities.

Further Reading

Poland, Warren S. (1990). Gift of laughter: Development of a sense of humor in clinical analysis. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 59,197-225.

—JEAN-PIERRE KAMENIAK

Aristotle, in De partibus animalium, defined man as a being capable of laughter, but laughter is not, as some optimists have claimed, a universal language. Its function and importance differed so widely, even during our historical period, depending on national, social, and other variables, that it is far easier to ask questions than to answer them. Why did (and do) some Christians, like Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), strongly disapprove of laughter? Is there any common element uniting the hearty, even crude, laughter provoked by carnival merrymaking and slapstick comedy (French farces and sotties, Spanish pasos, the Italian commedia dell'arte) and the urbane wit called festivitas by Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536) and Thomas More (1478–1535) and exemplified by the noble speakers in Baldassare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier (1528)? Can we clearly separate "popular" from "refined" or "learned" humor? And why is the terminology of humor not easily translated from one language to another?

Laughter was often considered more important in the Renaissance than it has been since. Several Renaissance princes, including Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) and Louis XII of France (ruled 1498–1515), were reputed to enjoy jokes, even those directed against themselves, whereas France's Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) is said to have made only one joke in his life. Unfortunately, even today no explanation of why we laugh is universally endorsed. Sixteenth-century theorists about humor were mainly medical authorities (Laurent Joubert [1529–1582], Ambroise Paré [1510–1590]) interested in physiology; in the seventeenth century Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), following Aristotle, articulated the first of the three commonest modern explanations of laughter: superiority, incongruity, and release from restraint. If we can usually see why satire provokes laughter, we are at a loss when we try to compare the humor of Molière (1622–1673) and Shakespeare (1564–1616), or of Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) and Laurence Sterne (1713–1768).

The Sixteenth Century

The Renaissance and the Reformation inspired a remarkable variety of verbal and visual humor. The great humanist Erasmus, in his Colloquies (1518), produced both biting anti-church satire ("The Funeral"), and sly and charming wit ("The Abbot and the Learned Lady"). Reformation and anti-Reformation satirists created an explosion of comic caricature in broadsheets attacking either Luther and his cohorts or the venal priests and hypocritical monks of the Roman Catholic Church. Humanist polemic did not shrink from scatological invective that would horrify most readers today (the Eccius Dedolatus), and French farce characters could urinate on stage. Much humanist wit, like the Epistles of Obscure Men, is incomprehensible to readers with no knowledge of Latin.

The century apparently reveled in jokes (facetiae in Latin) and in comic short stories, as numerous anthologies in England, France, Italy, and Germany attest. The most influential were those of Poggio Bracciolini in Italy (1438–1452) and Heinrich Bebel in Germany (1508–1512), both written in Latin. Later collections became larger and more inclusive; there are 981 facezie in the 1574 edition of Ludovico Domenichi, written in Italian. An Erasmian love of humor inspired both François Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel, 1532–1564), who used wit and hyperbole to convey his humanist message, and Shakespeare, whose comedies radiate a smiling acceptance of human frailty. Comic theater came to life again in most European countries in the sixteenth century, stimulated by the rediscovery of Aristotle's dramatic principles and of Plautus and Terence. National differences in comic outlook are strikingly illustrated by the German adaptation of Rabelais (1575–1590) by Johann Fischart, which is much cruder than its model and much less humanistically inclined. Comic visual art includes not only a wealth of satirical engravings, but the compelling visual grotesques of Pieter Bruegel (1525?–1569) and Hieronymus Bosch (1450?–1516) and the whimsical portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (c. 1530–1593), which are created exclusively of fruit, flowers, or fish.

The Seventeenth Century

Whereas much literature of the previous century was still written in Latin, this one saw the flowering of vernacular literatures; it is Spain's Golden Age, and France's Age of Classicism. Cervantes's Don Quixote (1615), generally recognized as the first novel, has comic moments, but its prevailing tone is ironic rather than frankly humorous. Comic theater flourished, with some common elements; for instance, the classical clownish slave lived on as the Spanish gracioso, as Molière's soubrette, as the zanni (crafty servant) of the commedia dell'arte, and as numerous characters in the plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson (1573–1637).

The century's great comic dramatists were not primarily satirists. Shakespeare's dramatic worlds are more imaginary than real. Molière's minor comedies owe more to literary sources than to real life (Les Fourberies de Scapin, 1671), and his best plays only occasionally reveal his scorn for stupid minor nobles, or for dangerous religious hypocrites (Le Tartuffe, 1667). Their genius, like Shakespeare's, lies in revealing character through comedy, though Shakespeare was freer to include farce in his plays. England's Restoration drama (after 1660) was much more satirical; William Wycherley (1640–1716), John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), John Farquhar (1678–1707), and William Congreve (1670–1729) delighted in skewering stupidity and pretentiousness, as Jonson had before them. Critics continued to discuss the form and function of stage comedy, and comic opera became a popular genre.

The Eighteenth Century

The Age of Enlightenment specialized in satire, though less in the theater than in other genres. Carlo Goldoni's (1707–1793) comedies continue the tradition of comedy of intrigue, while those of Pierre de Marivaux (1688–1763) are more interested in human emotions than in social mores. In Russia, Denis Fonvizin (1745–1792) showed members of the nobility in a comic light (The Brigadier, 1769).

England produced some satirical giants: Henry Fielding (1707–1754), whose sprawling novel Tom Jones (1749) has comic moments; Richard Sheridan (1751–1816), whose Mrs. Malaprop in The School for Scandal (1777) is a comic type to rival Shakespeare's Falstaff; William Hogarth, whose moralizing series (Marriage à la mode, 1745) prefigured the modern cartoon; the verse satires of John Dryden (1631–1700) and Alexander Pope (1688–1744), and above all, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745). Compared to his mentors, Erasmus and Rabelais, Swift is sometimes too ferocious to be comic, as when he recommends relieving the famine in Ireland by eating babies (A Modest Proposal, 1729), but Gulliver's Travels (1726) remains a humorous and readable indictment of the society of his time.

France's Voltaire (1694–1778) is often both subtler and funnier than Swift, especially in his masterpiece, Candide (1759), a comprehensive attack on the aristocracy, religion, and general prejudices of his time (a battle is a "heroic butchery"; a Spanish grandee demonstrates "pride suitable in a man with so many names"). A new element in this century is the connection between laughter and eroticism, in works by Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu (1689–1755), Denis Diderot (1713–1784), and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741–1803) (Les liaisons dangereuses, 1782).

Bibliography

Primary Source

Bowen, Barbara C. ed. One Hundred Renaissance Jokes: An Anthology. Birmingham, Ala., 1988. Latin jokes with English translations.

Secondary Sources

Bremmer, Jan, and Herman Roodenburg, eds. A Cultural History of Humor: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Malden, Mass., 1997.

Ménager, Daniel. La Renaissance et le rire. Paris, 1995.

—BARBARA C. BOWEN

An archaic term for any fluid substance in the body, such as blood, lymph, or bile.

Pl. humores, humors [L.] any fluid or semifluid in the body.

• aqueous h. — see aqueous humor.
• ocular h. — either of the humors of the eye—aqueous or vitreous.
• vitreous h. — see vitreous humor.

Mentions of the humors refer to the ancient Greek theory that a person's health and personality were determined by the balance of four basic fluids in the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. A dominance of any fluid would cause extremes in behavior. An excess of blood created a sanguine person who was joyful, aggressive, and passionate; a phlegmatic person was shy, fearful, and sluggish; too much yellow bile led to a choleric temperament characterized by impatience, anger, bitterness, and stubbornness; and excessive black bile created melancholy, a state of laziness, gluttony, and lack of motivation. Literary treatment of the humors is exemplified by several characters in Ben Jonson's plays Every Man in His Humour and Every Man out of His Humour. Also spelled Humours.

Quotes:

"Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors." - Johann Georg Zimmermann

"Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don't get sick you're missing half the fun." - Flip Wilson

"If you can make a woman laugh you can do anything with her." - Nicol Williamson

"Where ever you find humor, you find pathos close by it side." - Edwin P. Whipple

"It's hard to be funny when you have to be clean." - Mae West

See more famous quotes about Humor

It has been suggested that Theories of humor be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

"Hilarity" redirects here. For the U.S. Navy ship, see USS Hilarity (AM-241).

For other uses, see Humour (disambiguation).

Look up humour or humor in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Humour or humor (see American and British English spelling differences) is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. Many theories exist about what humour is and what social function it serves. People of all ages and cultures respond to humour. The majority of people are able to be amused, to laugh or smile at something funny, and thus they are considered to have a "sense of humour."

The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which stated that a mix of fluids known as humours (Greek: χυμός, chymos, literally juice or sap; metaphorically, flavour) controlled human health and emotion. (This theory has since been found to be counterfactual.)^{[citation needed]}

A sense of humour is the ability to experience humour, although the extent to which an individual will find something humorous depends on a host of variables, including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, intelligence, and context. For example, young children may possibly favour slapstick, such as Punch and Judy puppet shows or cartoons (e.g., Tom and Jerry). Satire may rely more on understanding the target of the humour, and thus tends to appeal to more mature audiences. Nonsatirical humour can be specifically termed "recreational drollery."^[1][2]

Smiling can imply a sense of humour and a state of amusement, as in this painting by Eduard von Grützner.

Contents 1 Understanding humour 1.1 Evolution of humour 2 Humour formulae 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

Understanding humour

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Arthur Schopenhauer lamented the misuse of the term "humour" (a German loanword from English) to mean any type of comedy. However, both "humour" and "comic" are often used when theorizing about the subject. The connotation of "humour" is more that of response, while "comic" refers more to stimulus. "Humour" also originally had a connotation of a combined ridiculousness and wit in one individual, the paradigm case being Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff. The French were slow to adopt the term "humour," and in French, "humeur" and "humour" are still two different words, the former still referring only to the archaic concept of humours.

Western humour theory begins with Plato, who attributed to Socrates (as a semihistorical dialogue character) in the Philebus (p. 49b) the view that the essence of the ridiculous is an ignorance in the weak, who are thus unable to retaliate when ridiculed. Later, in Greek philosophy, Aristotle, in the Poetics (1449a, pp. 34–35), suggested that an ugliness that does not disgust is fundamental to humour.

In ancient Sanskrit drama, Bharata Muni's Natya Shastra defined humour (hāsyam) as one of the eight nava rasas, or principle rasas (emotional responses), which can be inspired in the audience by bhavas, the imitations of emotions that the actors perform. Each rasa was associated with a specific bhavas portrayed on stage. In the case of humour, it was associated with mirth (hasya).

The terms "comedy" and "satire" became synonymous after Aristotle's Poetics was translated into Arabic in the medieval Islamic world, where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers and Islamic philosophers such as Abu Bischr, his pupil Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. Due to cultural differences, they disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation, and instead identified it with Arabic poetic themes and forms, such as hija (satirical poetry). They viewed comedy as simply the "art of reprehension" and made no reference to light and cheerful events or troublous beginnings and happy endings associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term "comedy" thus gained a new semantic meaning in Medieval literature.^[3]

The Incongruity Theory originated mostly with Kant, who claimed that the comic is an expectation that comes to nothing. Henri Bergson attempted to perfect incongruity by reducing it to the "living" and "mechanical."^[4]

An incongruity like Bergson's, in things juxtaposed simultaneously, is still in vogue. This is often debated against theories of the shifts in perspectives in humour; hence, the debate in the series Humor Research between John Morreall and Robert Latta.^[5] Morreall presented mostly simultaneous juxtapositions,^[6] with Latta countering that it requires a "cognitive shift" created by a discovery or solution to a puzzle or problem. Latta is criticized for having reduced jokes' essence to their own puzzling aspect.

Humour frequently contains an unexpected, often sudden, shift in perspective, which gets assimilated by the Incongruity Theory. This view has been defended by Latta (1998) and by Brian Boyd (2004).^[7] Boyd views the shift as from seriousness to play. Nearly anything can be the object of this perspective twist; it is, however, in the areas of human creativity (science and art being the varieties) that the shift results from "structure mapping" (termed "bisociation" by Koestler) to create novel meanings.^[8] Arthur Koestler argues that humour results when two different frames of reference are set up and a collision is engineered between them.

Tony Veal, who is taking a more formalised computational approach than Koestler did, has written on the role of metaphor and metonymy in humour,^[9][10][11] using inspiration from Koestler as well as from Dedre Gentner's theory of structure-mapping, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor, and Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier's theory of conceptual blending.

Some claim that humour cannot or should not be explained. Author E.B. White once said, "Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." [4]

Evolution of humour

As with any form of art, the same goes for humour: acceptance depends on social demographics and varies from person to person. Throughout history, comedy has been used as a form of entertainment all over the world, whether in the courts of the Western kings or the villages of the Far East. Both a social etiquette and a certain intelligence can be displayed through forms of wit and sarcasm. Eighteenth-century German author Georg Lichtenberg said that "the more you know humour, the more you become demanding in fineness."

Alastair Clarke explains: "The theory is an evolutionary and cognitive explanation of how and why any individual finds anything funny. Effectively, it explains that humour occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, and that recognition of this sort is rewarded with the experience of the humorous response, an element of which is broadcast as laughter." The theory further identifies the importance of pattern recognition in human evolution: "An ability to recognize patterns instantly and unconsciously has proved a fundamental weapon in the cognitive arsenal of human beings. The humorous reward has encouraged the development of such faculties, leading to the unique perceptual and intellectual abilities of our species."[5]

Humour formulae

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A comic that derives its humour by a character behaving in an unusual way

Humour can be verbal, visual, or physical.

Root components:

• appealing to feelings or to emotions.
• similar to reality, but not real.
• some surprise/misdirection, contradiction, ambiguity, or paradox.

Methods:

• hyperbole
• metaphor
• reductio ad absurdum or farce
• reframing
• timing

Rowan Atkinson explains in his lecture in the documentary "Funny Business"^[12] that an object or a person can become funny in three different ways. They are:

• By behaving in an unusual way
• By being in an unusual place
• By being the wrong size

Most sight gags fit into one or more of these categories.

Humour is also sometimes described as an ingredient in spiritual life. Humour is also the act of being funny. Some synonyms of funny or humour are hilarious, knee-slapping, spiritual, wise-minded, outgoing, and amusing. Some Masters have added it to their teachings in various forms. A famous figure in spiritual humour is the laughing Buddha.

See also

• Clowns
• Comedy
• Comedians
• Comedy and humour by nationality
• Comics
• Computational humour
• Gelotology
• Humour research
• Internet humour
• Joke
• Laughter
• List of publications in humour research
• Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
• Satire
  • Political satire
• Smile
• Theory of humour

References

1. ^ Seth Benedict Graham A cultural analysis of the Russo-Soviet Anekdot 2003 p.13
2. ^ Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World [1941, 1965]. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press p.12
3. ^ Webber, Edwin J. (January 1958), "Comedy as Satire in Hispano-Arabic Spain", Hispanic Review (University of Pennsylvania Press) 26 (1): 1–11, doi:10.2307/470561 
4. ^ Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900) English translation 1914.
5. ^ Robert L. Latta (1999) The Basic Humor Process: A Cognitive-Shift Theory and the Case against Incongruity, Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 3110161036 (Humor Research no. 5)
6. ^ John Morreall (1983) Taking Laughter Seriously, Suny Press, ISBN 0873956427
7. ^ Brian Boyd, Laughter and Literature: A Play Theory of Humor Philosophy and Literature - Volume 28, Number 1, April 2004, pp. 1-22
8. ^ Koestler, Arthur (1964): "The Act of Creation".
9. ^ Veal, Tony (2003): "Metaphor and Metonymy: The Cognitive Trump-Cards of Linguistic Humor"[1]
10. ^ Veale, Tony (2006): "The Cognitive Mechanisms of Adversarial Humor"[2]
11. ^ Veale, Tony (2004): "Incongruity in Humour: Root Cause of Epiphenomonon?"[3]
12. ^ Rowan Atkinson/David Hinton, Funny Business (tv series), Episode 1 - aired 22 November 1992, UK, Tiger Television Productions

Further reading

• Basu, S (December 1999), "Dialogic ethics and the virtue of humor" (Abstract), Journal of Political Philosophy (Blackwell Publishing Ltd) Vol. 7 (No. 4): 378–403, doi:10.1111/1467-9760.00082, http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/var.2006.22.1.14, retrieved on 2007-07-06  (Abstract)
• Billig, M. (2005). Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. London: Sage. ISBN 1412911435
• Bricker, Victoria Reifler (Winter, 1980) The Function of Humor in Zinacantan Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 411–418
• Buijzen, Moniek; Valkenburg, Patti M. (2004), "Developing a Typology of Humor in Audiovisual Media", Media Psychology Vol. 6 (No. 2): 147–167, doi:10.1207/s1532785xmep0602_2, http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s1532785xmep0602_2?prevSearch=allfield%3A(buijzen) (Abstract)
• Carrell, Amy (2000), Historical views of humour, University of Central Oklahoma. Retrieved on 2007-07-06.
• García-Barriocanal, Elena; Sicilia, Miguel-Angel; Palomar, David (2005) (pdf), A Graphical Humor Ontology for Contemporary Cultural Heritage Access, Ctra. Barcelona, km.33.6, 28871 Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), Spain,: University of Alcalá, http://is2.lse.ac.uk/asp/aspecis/20050064.pdf, retrieved on 2007-07-06 
• Goldstein, Jeffrey H., et al. (1976) "Humour, Laughter, and Comedy: A Bibliography of Empirical and Nonempirical Analyses in the English Language." It's a Funny Thing, Humour. Ed. Antony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press, 1976. 469-504.
• Holland, Norman. (1982) "Bibliography of Theories of Humor." Laughing; A Psychology of Humor. Ithaca: Cornell U P, 209-223.
• Luttazzi, Daniele (2004) Introduction to his Italian translation of Woody Allen's trilogy Side Effects, Without Feathers and Getting Even (Bompiani, 2004, ISBN 88-452-3304-9 (57-65).
• Martin, Rod A. (2007). The Psychology Of Humour: An Integrative Approach. London, UK: Elsevier Academic Press. ISBN 13: 978-0-12-372564-6
• McGhee, Paul E. (1984) "Current American Psychological Research on Humor." Jahrbuche fur Internationale Germanistik 16.2: 37-57.
• Mintz, Lawrence E., ed. (1988) Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1988. ISBN 0313245517; OCLC: 16085479.
• Mobbs, D., Greicius, M.D.; Abdel-Azim, E., Menon, V. & Reiss, A. L. (2003) "Humor modulates the mesolimbic reward centers". Neuron, 40, 1041-1048.
• Nilsen, Don L. F. (1992) "Satire in American Literature." Humor in American Literature: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1992. 543-48.
• Pogel, Nancy, and Paul P. Somers Jr. (1988) "Literary Humor." Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics. Ed. Lawrence E. Mintz. London: Greenwood, 1988. 1-34.
• Roth, G., Yap, R, & Short, D. (2006). "Examining humour in HRD from theoretical and practical perspectives". Human Resource Development International, 9(1), 121-127.
• Smuts, Aaron. "Humor". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Wogan, Peter (Spring 2006), "Laughing At First Contact" (Abstract), Visual Anthropology Review Vol. 22 (No. 1): 14–34, online December 12, 2006, doi:10.1525/var.2006.22.1.14, http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/var.2006.22.1.14, retrieved on 2007-07-06  (Abstract)

External links

• Humor at the Open Directory Project
• International Society for Humor Studies
• No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality and Ethnicity International Humanities Institute, Dartmouth College

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - humor, humør, sindstilstand, humoristisk sans
v. tr. - føje, rette sig efter, gå ind på

idioms:

• out of humour    i dårligt humør, uoplagt
• sense of humour    humoristisk sans

Nederlands (Dutch)
humor, humeur, gril, luim, een van de vier lichaamsvochten, toegeven, tegemoet komen, paaien

Français (French)
n. - humour, humeur, (Méd) humeur (arch)
v. tr. - amadouer (qn), se plier à (une demande)

idioms:

• out of humour    être en froid avec qn
• sense of humour    sens de l'humour

Deutsch (German)
n. - Laune, Humor, Körpersaft
v. - jmdm. seinen Willen lassen

idioms:

• out of humour    schlecht gelaunt
• sense of humour    Sinn für Humor

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - χιούμορ, πνεύμα, αίσθηση του χιούμορ, (μτφ.) (ψυχική) διάθεση, κέφι
v. - κάνω το κέφι ή το χατίρι, πάω με τα νερά του, καλοπιάνω, εξευμενίζω

idioms:

• out of humour    άκεφος, δύσθυμος
• sense of humour    αίσθηση του χιούμορ

Italiano (Italian)
indulgere, assecondare, lusingare, rappacificare, umore, umorismo, accesso

idioms:

• out of humour    scontento
• sense of humour    senso dell'umorismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - humor (m), disposição (f) mental ou temperamento (m)
v. - manter alguém em bom humor

idioms:

• out of humour    de mau humor
• sense of humour    senso (m) de humor

Русский (Russian)
юмор, темперамент, настроение, склонность, поткать, ублажать, приспосабливаться

idioms:

• out of humour    не в настроении
• sense of humour    чувство юмора

Español (Spanish)
n. - humor, humorismo, arranque, arrebato, comicidad, capricho
v. tr. - complacer, seguir el humor a, congraciarse con, acomodarse, adaptarse

idioms:

• out of humour    de mal humor
• sense of humour    sentido del humor

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - humor, humör, temperament, vätska (fysiol.)
v. - blidka, göra ngn till viljes

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
幽默, 诙谐, 使满足, 迁就

idioms:

• out of humour    不悦, 生气心情不好
• sense of humour    幽默感

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 幽默, 詼諧
v. tr. - 使滿足, 遷就

idioms:

• out of humour    不悅, 生氣心情不好
• sense of humour    幽默感

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 유머, 기질, 기분, 변덕스러운 행동
v. tr. - 만족시키다, 남의 비위를 맞추다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - おかしみ, ユーモア, 気質, 気性, 気分, 気まぐれ

idioms:

• out of humour    不機嫌である

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) رطوبه أو بخار, عادة أو مزاج, حاله ذهنيه مؤقته, نزوة, الدعابه أو الفكاهه أو الظرف, حس الدعابه أو الفكاهه أو النكته أو روحها ملكه عقليه تمكن المرء من اكتشاف المضحكات, أو تقديرها أو التعبير انها, كلام منطو على دعابه أو فكاهه (فعل) يلاطف, يداري, يساير, يكيف نفسه وفقا ل‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮הומור, היתול, חוש הומור, מצב-רוח, נטייה‬
v. tr. - ‮נכנע לנטיית-לב, מילא את רצון-, פינק, הפריז בחנופה, השלים עם‬

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