An inherently funny word is a word which can be found amusing without any given context, for reasons ranging from onomatopoeia to phonosemantics. Such words have been used by a range of influential comedians to enhance the humor of their routines.
It is part of the mythology of actors and writers that the consonant plosives (so called because they start suddenly or "explosively") p, b, t, d, k, and g are the funniest sounds in the English language.
Read more about Inherently Funny Word: References To The Concept, Funny Nonsense Words, Funny Numbers, See Also, References
Famous quotes containing the words funny and/or word:
“It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down.... Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to set them right.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)