Dry air, dry wit, and the fluid origins of humor
It鈥檚 that time of year when I find it鈥檚 a good idea to keep a bottle of hand lotion within easy reach.
I love the winter light, and the sunshine that pours into the room where I work. But the low humidity of heated interior spaces can lead to a general feeling of being all dried out.
A friend, a while back, asked me to consider the connections between humor and intelligence. Is the capacity to be funny a sign of intelligence? Well, of course. If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, comics are its unofficial supreme court.
But as I anointed my knuckles for the thousandth time of the season the other day, another question came to thought: How does it happen that we denote funniness, that which makes us laugh, with a term that originally referred to moisture, indeed, to bodily fluids?
Humor originally referred to the fluids or juices of a plant or animal. The word comes from a Latin term meaning 鈥渢o get wet.鈥� Ancient physiologists believed that a person鈥檚 temperament was determined by the interaction of four humors 鈥� fluids 鈥� in his or her body: blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy (black bile). Modern physiologists, of course, have very different ideas and point out that 鈥渕elancholy鈥� was completely imaginary.
If you think these ideas have died out completely, though, think again. They live on in our language when we speak of someone鈥檚 鈥渟anguine temperament,鈥� for instance 鈥� in which the blood was supposedly the predominant humor. The idea of 鈥渕elancholy鈥� may be the hardest of these dumb ideas to shake off completely. For one thing, melancholy is a rather attractive-sounding word.
But I digress. Once humor came to refer to the temperament, and not the fluid itself, it eventually shifted again. By the early 16th century, it referred not just to one鈥檚 temperament but to one鈥檚 mood. (Temperament is to mood as climate is to weather.) Over the next century and a half the meaning of humor shifted further, from a mood to a good mood to a mood to crack jokes. Humor used to mean 鈥渇unniness鈥� was first recorded in 1682, according to the . By 1705, humorous was being used in the modern sense of 鈥渇unny.鈥� Funny itself would appear 50 years later.
H.M. Fowler鈥檚 Modern English Usage (which, some would quibble, is 鈥渕odern鈥� in the same sense that the Pont Neuf in Paris is 鈥渘ew鈥�) has a nifty little table of the types of humor. It鈥檚 worth a look.
It distinguishes among humor, wit, satire, sarcasm, invective, irony, cynicism, and 鈥渟ardonic.鈥� The last one offends my sense of parallelism. I want this thing to be a string of nouns, so what鈥檚 an adjective doing in the lineup? What鈥檚 the related noun 鈥� sardonicism? Well, actually, yes. Who knew?
I have more substantive doubts about 鈥渋nvective.鈥� It just doesn鈥檛 seem like a type of humor, except in a Mort Sahl sense (鈥淚s there any group I haven鈥檛 offended?鈥�)
For each type of humor, Fowler鈥檚 table lists 鈥渕otive/aim,鈥� 鈥減rovince,鈥� 鈥渕ethod/means,鈥� and 鈥渁udience.鈥� Thus 鈥渨it,鈥� for instance, has as its motive 鈥渢hrowing light.鈥� Its province is 鈥渨ords & ideas.鈥� Its method is 鈥渟urprise.鈥� And its audience is 鈥渢he intelligent.鈥�
We may appreciate 鈥渄ry wit,鈥� but there鈥檚 an etymological reason for comics to be all wet. Meanwhile, please pass me the hand cream.
