Word Finder - humour

definition

The quality of being amusing, comical, funny.

example

She has a great sense of humour, and I always laugh a lot whenever we get together.

synonyms

• amusingness
• comedy
• comicality
• wit

definition

A mood, especially a bad mood; a temporary state of mind or disposition brought upon by an event; an abrupt illogical inclination or whim.

example

He was in a particularly vile humour that afternoon.

synonyms

• mood

definition

Any of the fluids in an animal body, especially the four "cardinal humours" of blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm that were believed to control the health and mood of the human body.

synonyms

• bodily fluid

definition

Either of the two regions of liquid within the eyeball, the aqueous humour and vitreous humour.

definition

Moist vapour, moisture.

definition

To pacify by indulging.

example

I know you don't believe my story, but humour me for a minute and imagine it to be true.

It was only equalled in its ill humour by his attacks on Bavaria in 1870.

But There Is More Than Humour In Haliburton'S Books.

A sense of humour added much to his campaign speeches.

His dryness is associated with a fund of dry humour exceedingly effective in its proper place, as in The Book Hunter.

In their society he would talk well and showed a keen sense of humour.

Many anecdotes have been told to illustrate his kindliness, his inimitable humour, and his remarkable eloquence.

His music is in this way singularly expressive; its humour and pathos.

He had an admirable gift of lucid, direct narrative, and an unfailing fund of incident, and of humour, sometimes bordering on farce.

His talk was generally grave, but every now and then was lit up by dry humour.

The Windmill tavern occupies a prominent position in the action of Every Man in his Humour.

His arguments were marked by incisive humour and fertility of ideas.

Delicate irony and pointed epigram take the place of broad humour.

But literary criticism is merged in admiration of the wit, the humour, the vivacity, the satire of a piece which brings before us the old life of Florence in a succession of brilliant scenes.

Doni's Works; he also published a treatise on The Theory of Numbers as applied to Music. His celebrated canons, published in London, about 1800, edited by Pio Cianchettini, show him to have had a strong sense of musical humour.

Relating anecdotes with appreciative humour and fascinating dramatic skill, lie used them freely and effectively in conversation and argument.

As an " Engager " he had seen his country conquered by English arms. His policy was to keep Scotland in good humour by restoring presbytery; to raise in the country a militia strong enough to support Charles against the English parliament, and thus, in both countries, to make the royal prerogative absolute.

A fine specimen of sustained humour is to be found in his speech pro Murena, where he rallies the jurisconsults and the Stoics.

Another sudden change took place a few years later, James falling out of humour with the church on the question of the restoration of the Roman Catholic lords and angered by the free criticism of some of the ministers.

Though he prevailed in the end, Gustavus was obliged to humour the people throughout.

Jakob Wallenberg (1746-1778) described a voyage he took to the East Indies and China under the very odd title of Min son pei galejan (" My Son at the Galleys "), a work full of humour and originality.

They express the gracious courtesy and playful humour which were natural to him, and his varied interests in human life.

He had what is a rare quality among English poets, the gift of humour, which was very singularly absent from others who possessed many other of the higher qualities of the intellect.

There are many anecdotes told of him which attest his possession of a playful humour, united with shrewd mother-wit.

So far as his writings show, he was almost wholly lacking in humour, and in imagination little less so.

But Brunhild is ill content; though she saw Siegfried do homage to Gunther at Isenstein she is not convinced, and believes that Siegfried should have been her husband; and on the bridal night she vents her ill humour on the hapless Gunther by tying him up in a knot and hanging him on the wall.

In the House of Commons his light but pointed humour gradually led to the coining of a new word, "birrelling," and his literary and oratorical reputation grew apace.

His vanity and egotism are undeniable, but they are redeemed by his fancy and his humour.

Happy the humorist whose works and life are an illustration of the great moral truth that the sense of humour is the just balance of all the faculties of man, the best security against the pride of knowledge and the conceits of the imagination, the strongest inducement to submit with a wise and pious patience to the vicissitudes of human existence.

His style is clear, direct and remarkably free from cumbrous Latin constructions; he employed, whenever he could, the pithy and homely sayings of the peasants, and is not reluctant to point his moral with a rough humour.

His famous jest (which even Johnson allowed to have merit) - Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known " - is the best description possible of his humour and condition during the latter part of this period of decline.

In these cynic weeds and with Epicurean good humour did he dictate his politics, and in this school did the heir of the empire attend his lessons and imbibe them."

Valerius Martialis or Martial (c. 41-104) that we have a true image of the average sensual frivolous life of Rome at the end of the 1st century, seen through a medium of wit and humour, but undistorted by the exaggeration which moral indignation and the love of effect add to the representation of Juvenal.

Swift he resembled in the occasional broadness of his humour, in his brilliantly successful use of sarcasm and irony, 2 and in his mastery of the hoax.

In private life his ease of bearing, friendliness, and, above all, his inexhaustible fund of humour and irony, won him a large circle of friends; and judges so exacting as Mmes de Stael and de Remusat and Lord Brougham avowed their delight in his society.

From a literary point of view Phaedrus is inferior to Babrius, and to his own imitator, La Fontaine; he lacks the quiet picturesqueness and pathos of the former, and the exuberant vivacity and humour of the latter.

There is no lack of humour in them, and there is never a hint of affectation in the writing; indeed, the author, doing spontaneously the work nearest to his hand, was very likely unconscious that he was making a contribution to history.

Like Cervantes at times, Mark Twain reveals a depth of melancholy beneath his playful humour, and like Moliere always, he has a deep scorn and a burning detestation of all sorts of sham and pretence, a scorching hatred of humbug and hypocrisy.

Apart from a number of anecdotes distinguished rather for sarcastic humour than for probability, Lacydes exists for us as a man of refined character, a hard worker and an accomplished orator.

The homely terseness of his style, his abounding humour - rough, cheery and playful, but irresistible in its simplicity, and occasionally displaying sudden and dangerous barbs of satire - his avoidance of dogmatic subtleties, his noble advocacy of practical righteousness, his bold and open denunciation of the oppression practised by the powerful, his scathing diatribes against ecclesiastical hypocrisy, the transparent honesty of his fervent zeal, tempered by sagacious moderation - these are the qualities which not only rendered his influence so paramount in his lifetime, but have transmitted his memory to posterity as perhaps that of the one among his contemporaries most worthy of our interest and admiration.

But this was mitigated by a strong sense of humour (not always sarcastic, though sometimes savagely so), and by tenderness, best seen in his epistolary friendships with women; and it was quite overborne by an instinct and passion for great practical affairs.

As a master of humour, irony and invective he has no superior; his reasoning powers are no less remarkable within their range, but he never gets beyond the range of an advocate.

His mastery of the English tongue, his dramatic power, his instinctive art of impersonation, which had become a second nature, his vivid imagination, his breadth of intellectual view, the catholicity of his sympathies, his passionate enthusiasm, which made for the moment his immediate theme seem to him the one theme of transcendent importance, his quaint humour alternating with genuine pathos, and above all his simple and singularly unaffected devotional nature, made him as a preacher without a peer in his own time and country.

Those, on the contrary, who think that the nation which was on the very eve of surrendering itself to the Napoleonic absolutism was not in a hopeful humour for peace and the European order, will believe that Burke's protests were as perspicacious as they were powerful, and that anything which chilled the energy of the war was as fatal as he declared it to be.

These sketches, which abounded in clever picturings of national and individual character, drawn with great satirical humour, were collected in 1837, and published under the title of The Clockmaker, or Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville.

In the dignity and simplicity of the old backwoodsman there is something almost Hebraic. With his naïve vanity and strong reverent piety, his valiant wariness, his discriminating cruelty, his fine natural sense of right and wrong, his rough limpid honesty, his kindly humour, his picturesque dialect, and his rare skill in woodcraft, he has all the breadth and roundness of a type and all the eccentricities and peculiarities of a portrait.

Miss Keller's humour is that deeper kind of humour which is courage.

The humour of this last is especially bright and effective, but, unluckily for the author, the piece is believed to have been retouched by some other hand.

From near the entrance of the optic nerve, through the original choroidal fissure, arises the much-folded pecten, deeply pigmented and very vascular, far into the vitreous humour.

He was "gay and sprightly, with a turn for wit and humour."

Clear and forcible in style and arrangement, they are models of Puritan exposition and of appeal through the emotions to the individual conscience, illuminated by frequent flashes of spontaneous and often highly unconventional humour.