Even outside his plays, Neil Simon put forward the proposition that some words were funnier than others. A summation of this idea appears in a monologue in The Sunshine Boys.
Willy Clark:
Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know what words are funny and which words are not funny. Alka Seltzer is funny. You say 'Alka Seltzer' you get a laugh … Words with 'k' in them are funny. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland … Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. Cab is funny. Cockroach is funny – not if you get 'em, only if you say 'em.
He's saying that the "K" sound is funny, since I assume the character was not so poor at spelling. From the above examples, several have multiple "K" sounds.
Bugs Bunny may agree with this theory. The trains that took off in his cartoons had as their destination: Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga. As Bugs explained when he became lost, somehow tunneling through to Antarctica or a Foreign Legion post in the Sahara: "I should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque."
Even as curmudgeonly a writer as George Mencken subscribed to the K theory, listing such towns as Kalamazoo and Keokuk. Mencken was also responsible for one of my favorite flights of words in his description of the inauguration speech of Warren G. Harding:
Setting aside a college professor or two and half a dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he [Harding] takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati. That is to say, he writes the worst English I have even encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.
There I go, being anti-Harding. A bold choice in these divisive political days.
Neil Simon was one of a famous group of writers for the classic Sid Caesar Your Show of Shows (a writing stable which included Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, and Larry Gelbart). Those writers once came to the conclusion that the funniest number is 32. I would have gone with "gazillion," although 32 gazillion is damn fine.
Thomas Moore Devlin, writing for the linguistic journal, Babbel Magazine explored the subject of the funniest word. First he derived four rules for what makes a word funny.
It should be an uncommon word.
It should ideally have some kind of humorous use in the native language.
It should have hard stops, especially "k" sounds.
It should be a benign violation. [that is, it should be offensive or suggestive, but not very.]
From this he [somehow] came to the conclusion that the funniest word is "cucumber," one of the words that appeared on Willy Clark's list.
Long ago, I recall reading a magazine article on Monty Python coming to America. In this article the comedy troupe provided a longish list of words that are inherently funny. I remember not being stirred by most of them, but one did make me guffaw and stands out in my memory: batshit.
The word "batshit" no longer causes me to involuntarily laugh. Maybe it is overused, or maybe my tastes have changed. I think "guano" is funnier. On the other hand, I did chuckle when I read a political commentary that described our current state of affairs as bat-shittery. My own rule of what makes words funny: add an incongruous suffix like -ery or -orama. As Gordie commented in Stand By Me: "And Lardass just sat back and enjoyed what he'd created -- a complete and total barf-o-rama!"
This leads me to the conclusion that many of the funniest words are directed toward my inner adolescent.
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| Colonel "Bat" Guano from Dr. Strangelove. Played by Keenan Wynn whose father, Ed, famously said on his deathbed: "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. |
The entries are a personal selection which he presents in alphabetical order which offends my antialphabeticalmentarianist views. The first word is abibliophobia, the fear of running out of things to read. He does include all-time greats like argle-bargle, collywobbles, and brouhaha, the last of which has a built in laugh.
This site, which extends on Wikipedia's entry on Inherently Funny Words, has a number of additional takes on different approaches to the funniest words as they appear in fiction.
George Carlin is cited as saying "kumquats," "garbanzos," "guacamole," and "succotash" have names that makes them too funny to eat.
Science to the Rescue
There are scientific studies into what is the funniest word because, of course, there are.One study had a group of 821 English men and women rate approximately 5000 common words on a scale of 1 to 5, with five being the most humorous. The winning words?
Booty (4.32)
Tit (4.25)
Booby (4.13)
Hooter (4.13)
Nitwit (4.03)
Twit (4)
Waddle (4)
Tinkle (3.94)
Bebop (3.93)
Egghead (3.92)
Ass (3.92)
Twerp (3.92)
Thankfully the study group recognized these two words were the least funny:
Rape (1.18) and Torture (1.26).
It should be noted that this study looked at the five thousand most common words, so kerfuffle was likely never a choice. Only tinkle had a K sound. A predominant theme was the dirty-but-not-too-dirty-word snort. As School Superintendent Chalmers on the Simpsons once said: Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to my vacation at Lake Titicaca. Try to make a joke out of that, Mr. Smart Guy.
The people studying artificial intelligence are trying to make computers funny. In their journals are a number of studies looking at funny words. One such study performed a crowd-source review of 120,000 English words and "phrases." The phrases they list are word pairs like namby pamby or woo woo. It took English speakers from all over the word, with a fair number from India.
Of course each individual didn't rate 120,000 words. The words were divided up in chunks, rated and the top 216 were examined. From there, the funniest were selected.
The funniest words?
1. asshattery
2. clusterfuck
3. douchebaggery
4. poppycock
5. craptacular
6. cockamamie
7. gobbledegook
8. nincompoops
9. wanker
10. kerfuffle
11. cockle pickers
12. pussyfooting
13. tiddlywinks
14. higgledy piggledy
15. kumquats
16. boondoggle
17. doohickey
18. annus horribilis
19. codswallop
20. shuttlecock
Fourteen of these have K sounds. Seven have multiple K sounds. My personal choice for funniest word is kerfuffle. The complete list of 216 finalists is included below.
I'll end with this tangential anecdote. Once in my pharmacology class, I thought I'd perform an ice-breaker. I asked students to write down their favorite name for a body part. For example, euphonic words like uvula, or my favorite: the zonules of Zinn. Reading through the selections I came across one answer that I accidentally read out loud before editing: my clitoris. At first I thought, this is a male student having a snickering joke at my expense. I reminded the students that the exercise was not about your favorite body part, just your favorite word naming a body part. Then a female student raised her hand and announced, "That was me. I really like my clitoris."
The complete 216 word list mentioned above in descending order:
asshattery, clusterfuck, douchebaggery, poppycock, craptacular, cockamamie, gobbledegook, nincompoops, wanker, kerfuffle, cockle pickers, pussyfooting, tiddlywinks, higgledy piggledy, kumquats, boondoggle, doohickey, annus horribilis, codswallop, shuttlecock, bejeezus, bamboozle, whakapapa, artsy fartsy, pooper scoopers, fugly, dunderheaded, dongles, didgeridoo, dickering, bacon butties, woolly buggers, pooch punt, twaddle, dabbawalas, goober, apeshit, nut butters, hoity toity, glockenspiel, diktats, mollycoddling, pussy willows, bupkis, tighty whities, nut flush, namby pamby, bugaboos, hullaballoo, hoo hah, crapola, jerkbaits, batshit, schnitzels, sexual napalm, arseholes, buffoonery, lollygag, weenies, twat, diddling, cockapoo, boob tube, galumphing, ramrodded, schlubby, poobahs, dickheads, fufu, nutjobs, skedaddle, crack whore, dingbat, bitch slap, razzmatazz, wazoo, schmuck, cock ups, boobies, cummerbunds, stinkbait, gazumped, moobs, bushwhacked, dong, pickleball, rat ass, bootlickers, skivvies, belly putter, spelunking, faffing, spermatogenesis, butt cheeks, blue tits, monkeypox, cuckolded, wingnuts, muffed punt, ballyhoo, niggly, cocksure, oompah, trillion dong, shiitake, cockling, schlocky, portaloos, pupusas, thrust reverser, pooja, schmaltzy, wet noodle, piggeries, weaner, chokecherry, tchotchkes, titties, doodad, troglodyte, nookie, annulus, poo poo, semen samples, nutted, foppish, muumuu, poundage, drunken yobs, yabbies, chub, butt whipping, noobs, ham fisted, pee pee, woo woo, squeegee, flabbergasted, yadda yadda, dangdut, coxless pairs, twerps, tootsies, big honkin, porgies, dangly, guffawing, wussies, thingies, bunkum, wedgie, kooky, knuckleheads, nuttin, mofo, fishmonger, thwack, teats, peewee, cocking, wigwams, red wigglers, priggish, hoopla, poo, twanged, snog, pissy, poofy, newshole, dugong, goop, whacking, viagogo, chuppah, fruitcakes, caboose, cockfights, hippocampus, vindaloo, holeshot, hoodoo, clickety clack, backhoes, loofah, skink, party poopers, civvies, quibble, whizzy, gigolo, bunged, whupping, weevil, spliffs, toonie, gobby, infarct, chuffed, gassy, crotches, chits, proggy, doncha, yodelling, snazzy, fusarium, bitty, warbled, guppies, noshes, dodgems, lard, meerkats, lambast, chawl.
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| Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press |
Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.
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Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of A Predator's Game. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.