2022-10-19
Ref.:https://www.gotoknow.org/posts/683862
Revision H- 2020-10-13
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด H - Humor & wit
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Dictionary.com
ออกเสียง Humor (British = Humour) = ‘HYOO-mer’
Dictionary of Problem Words and Expression
Humor & wit
Humor may be defined as a comic quality causing amusement:
“The humor of his predicament caused him to laugh at himself.”
Humor is also applied to the abilities and faculties
of seeing, understanding, appreciating, and expressing
what is amusing and laughter-producing
and to a frame of mind (in a good humor that day).
Humor consists largely of a recognition
and expression of oddities, peculiarities,
and absurdities in an act or situation.
Wit is derived from an Old English word, witan,
meaning “to know,”
and still possesses the idea of understanding and recognizing.
Wit is an intellectual display of cleverness and quickness of perception,
whereas humor is less obviously mental
in its approaches to absurdity and incongruity.
Wit plays with words;
humor rises from situations or incidents
and involves a sympathetic
and even kindly recognition
of the follies and stupidities of mankind.
In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I,
Falstaff demonstrates his wit
through the use of puns and verbal fencing.
His bluffing, his laughter at himself,
and his recognition of the ludicrousness
of various situations are examples of humor.
THE NEW DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL LITERACY, THIRD EDITION
NOTES FOR HUMOR
Physicians in the Middle Ages believed that
four principal humors — blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile
— controlled body functions
and that a person's temperament
resulted from the humor that was most prevalent in the body.
Sanguine people were controlled by blood,
phlegmatic people by phlegm,
choleric people by yellow bile (also known as “choler”),
and melancholic people by black bile (also known as “melancholy”).
Dictionary.com
SYNONYM STUDY FOR HUMOR
Humor & wit
refer to an ability to perceive and
express a sense of the clever or amusing.
Humor consists principally in the recognition
and expression of incongruities or peculiarities
present in a situation or character.
It is frequently used to illustrate some
fundamental absurdity in human nature or conduct,
and is generally thought of as more kindly than wit:
a genial and mellow type of humor; his biting wit.
Wit is a purely intellectual manifestation
of cleverness and quickness of apprehension
in discovering apparent analogies between things really unlike,
and expressing them in brief, diverting,
and often sharp observations or remarks.
Humor & gratify & indulge
imply attempting to satisfy
the wishes or whims of (oneself or others).
To humor is to comply with a mood, fancy, or caprice,
as in
order to satisfy, soothe, or manage: to humor an invalid.
To gratify is to please by satisfying the likings or desires:
to gratify someone by praising him.
Indulge suggests a yielding to wishes
that perhaps should not be given in to:
to indulge an unreasonable demand,
to indulge an irresponsible son.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary
hu′mor•less, adj.
hu′mor•less•ly, adv.
hu′mor•less•ness, n.
syn: humor & wit
refer to an ability to perceive
and express a sense of the clever or amusing.
humor consists principally in the recognition
and expression of incongruities or
peculiarities present in a situation or character.
It is frequently used to illustrate some
fundamental absurdity in human nature or conduct,
and is generally thought of as a kindly trait:
a genial and mellow type of humor.
wit is a purely intellectual, often spontaneous,
manifestation of cleverness and quickness
in discovering analogies between things really unlike,
and expressing them in brief, diverting,
and often sharp observations: biting wit.
The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary
hu·mor = (hyo͞o′mər)
One of the four fluids of the body
—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile
—whose relative proportions were thought
in ancient and medieval medicine
to determine general health and character.
Word History
Doctors in ancient times and in the Middle Ages
thought the human body
contained a mixture of four substances, called humors,
that determined a person's health and character.
The humors were fluids (humor means "fluid" in Latin),
namely blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.
Illnesses were thought to be caused by
an imbalance in the humors,
as were defects in personality.
Too much black bile, for example,
was thought to make one gloomy,
and too much yellow bile was thought
to make one short-tempered.
Modern English has words referring to these moods
that come from the Greek words for the relevant humors.
We call a gloomy person melancholic,
from the Greek term for "black bile,"
and we call a short-tempered person choleric,
from the Greek word for "yellow bile."
Our word humorous, in fact,
originally meant
"having changeable moods due to the influence of different humors."
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Choose the Right Synonym for wit
Noun
WIT, HUMOR, IRONY, SARCASM, SATIRE, REPARTEE
mean a mode of expression intended to arouse amusement.
WIT suggests the power to evoke laughter
by remarks showing verbal felicity or ingenuity
and swift perception
especially of the incongruous.
a playful wit
HUMOR implies an ability to perceive the ludicrous,
the comical, and the absurd in human life
and to express these usually without bitterness.
a sense of humor
IRONY applies to a manner of expression
in which the intended meaning
is the opposite of what is seemingly expressed.
the irony of the title
SARCASM applies to expression
frequently in the form of irony
that is intended to cut or wound.
given to heartless sarcasm
SATIRE applies to writing that exposes
or ridicules conduct, doctrines, or institutions
either by direct criticism or
more often through irony, parody, or caricature.
a satire on the Congress
REPARTEE implies the power of
answering quickly, pointedly, or wittily.
a dinner guest noted for repartee
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Verb
INDULGE, PAMPER, HUMOR, SPOIL, BABY, MOLLYCODDLE
mean to show undue favor to a person's desires and feelings.
INDULGE implies excessive compliance
and weakness in gratifying another's
or one's own desires.
indulged myself with food at the slightest excuse
PAMPER implies inordinate gratification of desire
for luxury and comfort with consequent enervating effect.
pampered by the amenities of modern living
HUMOR stresses a yielding to a person's moods or whims.
humored him by letting him tell the story
SPOIL stresses the injurious effects
on character by indulging or pampering.
foolish parents spoil their children
BABY suggests excessive care, attention,
or solicitude.
babying students by grading too easily
MOLLYCODDLE suggests an excessive degree
of care and attention to another's health or welfare.
refused to mollycoddle her malingering son
Did You Know?
In the Middle Ages it was believed that
a person’s health and disposition
were the result of a balance
of four fluids in the body.
These fluids were called humors,
from the Latin word humor, meaning “moisture.”
The fluids were blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
If a person had a cheerful disposition,
it was said to be a result of an excess of blood.
A sluggish disposition was the result of an excess of phlegm.
A hot-tempered disposition was said
to be caused by an excess of yellow bile,
and the disposition of a gloomy person
was the result of an excess of black bile.
In time,
humor came to be used as a general term
for “disposition or temperament.”
From this developed
the sense of “a changeable state of mind” or “mood.”
More recently humor has come to refer to
something that is funny.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Words at Play
Humorless Words for the Bodily Humors
From the sanguine to the downright choleric
Humor
noun, in medieval physiology:
a fluid or juice of an animal or plant specifically:
one of the four fluids
entering into the constitution of the body
and determining by their relative proportions
a person's health and temperament
That's right:
before humor was funny,
a humor was something that could be described as
a fluid or juice of an animal or plant.
It was the Middle Ages,
after all, and things could be downright medieval sometimes.
It all got started long before medieval times though.
While it was still the established thinking
in the European Middle Ages,
the physiological theory of the humors,
dates to ancient Greece,
with the four cardinal humors
being blood, phlegm, choler (aka yellow bile),
and melancholy (aka black bile).
The particular mixture of the four humors
in a particular individual was thought
to determine that person's temperament
as well as their mental and physical qualities.
Ideally, you wanted to have a perfectly
proportioned mixture of the four humors;
if you didn't,
you'd skew toward being too much one way
or not enough another. (More on that below).
The word humor traces back to Latin humor or umor,
meaning "moisture," which gets us pretty easily to the "fluid"
meaning of the English word,
but how did we get to the funny-related meanings of humor?
Well, the physiological use
referring to the four cardinal humors
eased into a use of humor to mean "temperament, disposition,"
which led to "mood," which got us to "whim, fancy,"
and eventually to a plural use referring to actions
that reveal the oddities or quirks of human temperament
—such humors being
especially suited for comedic theatrical presentation.
The audience saw the humors of a character
and they were whimsical, eccentric, and often funny.
Soon after, the sense referring to the ability to be funny
or to be amused by things that are funny developed.
