Physical comedy will always get a laugh, but some of the funniest jokes involve clever wordplay or layers upon layers of storytelling. And then there are other occasions where all it takes is one silly-sounding word to make someone chortle. Some humorous English terms sound hilarious on their own without any additional context, though everyone has a different opinion when it comes to which one is funniest. Here’s a look at some rib-tickling contenders, according to experts in both language and comedy.

In a 2017 study, researchers assigned subjective “humor ratings” to 4,997 English words in an effort to determine the funniest terms. More than 800 participants were polled, with the results showing a clear winner: “booty.” The word can refer to a pirate’s plunder or a person’s butt, but in either case, “booty” received a humor rating of 4.32/5. That beat out other strong contenders including “tit,” “booby,” and “nitwit.”

That same study provided some interesting findings broken down by sex and age. Men found sexual terms such as “bondage” and “orgy” to be funniest, whereas women preferred sillier, more benign terms such as “giggle” and “circus.” For younger folks, “goatee” and “joint” were the most riotous; compare that to older respondents, who found “burlesque” and “pong” to be particularly humorous.

In his 1972 play The Sunshine Boys, comedic playwright Neil Simon mentions the brand “Alka Seltzer” as one of the funniest terms in English. The character Willy Clark expresses a belief about how words containing the letter “K” (or even a “K” sound) simply sound funnier than others. He provides some contrasting examples: “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.”

In an interview with The Guardian in 2019, English stand-up comic Chris McCausland claimed the funniest English word is “hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.” Not only is this a silly word to say, but it also has a humorously ironic meaning, as it refers to a fear of long words. 

In a 2019 study, psychologists Chris Westbury and Geoff Hollis of the University of Alberta determined “upchuck” to be the funniest word. This term — which is American slang for “vomit” — topped a list of 45,516 contenders, winning over runners-up including “bubby” and “wriggly.” The abstract of their paper claimed, “Words are judged funnier if they are less common and have an improbable orthographic or phonological structure.” In layman’s terms, that means that words are funnier if they are rare and have an unusual spelling or sound. As part of the same study, “harassment” was deemed to be the least funny English word.

It may be simple, but “fart” is considered to be the funniest word by many children and even some adults — including Scott Aukerman, an American comedian known for his work on TV’s Mr. Show and the podcast Comedy Bang! Bang! In a 2020 interview, Aukerman claimed “fart” is “not only a funny word, but also a funny sound. And they smell funny, too. The trifecta! How many words are all three?” In terms of pure comedy, it’s hard to argue with that logic.

In 2009, Bucknell University linguistics professor Robert Beard published a book titled The 100 Funniest Words in English. When creating his list, Beard took into account several factors, including pronunciation, meaning, usage, and history. In the end, Beard determined “absquatulate” (an intransitive verb meaning “decamp” or “abscond”) to be one of the funniest words, along with “collywobbles” (“stomach pain”),  “gongoozle” (“to idly observe”), and “snollygoster” (a shrewd, unprincipled person”).

While some words have fallen out of style, their humorous nature persists today. The team at Merriam-Webster highlighted the term “flummadiddle” as one of the funniest English words from the 19th century. The word means “something foolish or worthless,” though it’s funny to use even if you don’t know its exact definition. “Flummadiddle” was originally used in reference to fringe on dresses, though it evolved to refer to something nonsensical by the 1840s.

When you receive a loan, you usually have to pay it back. But with language, loanwords are eternal gifts that are there to stay. An English loanword is borrowed directly into the language with little to no modification. However, there are many words that are overlooked as loanwords because they’ve become so ingrained in the everyday English lexicon. Here are eight English words  you might not know were borrowed directly from another language.

The word “shampoo” dates to the mid-18th century, and comes from the Hindi champo, which, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, means “to press, knead the muscles.” It’s believed that champo is derived from Sanskrit’s capayati, meaning “kneads.” At first, English speakers primarily used “shampoo” in reference to massaging the body, before it came to specifically mean lathering hair, no later than 1860.

Czech playwright Karel Čapek almost certainly didn’t realize the indelible impact he’d have on the English language when he wrote his 1920 play R.U.R., which is short for Rossum’s Universal Robots. In this work, Čapek coined the term “robot,” which comes from the Czech robotnik, meaning “forced worker.” That term is derived from robota, meaning “forced labor,” which itself comes from the old Slavic word rabu, meaning “slave.” It’s an ominous origin story for a term that has come to apply to a range of topics, from sci-fi characters to automated processes. 

You might have already known that “karaoke” comes from Japanese, but it’s actually a double loanword in the sense that it comes from an English word adopted by the Japanese, and then the Japanese word was adopted in English. “Karaoke” is a combination of the Japanese terms kara and oke, the former of which means “empty.” Oke, meanwhile, is a shortening of okesutora — the Japanese spelling of the English term “orchestra.” The Japanese invented karaoke machines in the 1970s, and both the term and the activity were soon adopted by fun-loving English speakers.

The concept of zero originated in ancient times widely popularized by Arabic mathematicians who spelled it sifr — derived from the Sanskrit sunya-m (“empty place”). The term was later adopted by Medieval Latin speakers, who wrote it as zephirum, which was shortened to zero by Italian speakers. That term then was adopted by French speakers, who wrote it as zéro. “Zero” made its way to the English language sometime around 1600. At that point, “zero” meant something akin to “the absence of all quantities considered as quantity.” However, as mathematics progressed in Europe, it came to mean the “initial point of progress or reckoning” by the mid-19th century, as well as “nothing” in a general sense. 

In the modern English sense, one might relate “avatar” to the blockbuster movie of the same name or a character you create in a video game. The technological connotation is quite recent, however; the Online Etymology Dictionary claims it dates back to the 1992 novel Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson. But long before “avatar” was a term used by English speakers, it was used in Hindi to mean “descent of a Hindu deity to earth in an incarnate or tangible form.” It’s derived from the Sanskrit avatarana, meaning “descent.”

Whether you spell it “ketchup” or “catsup,” the name of this popular condiment can be traced back to various Asian languages. One theory is that it comes from the Tulu language of India, specifically the word kajipu, meaning “curry.” Another popular belief is that the Malay kəchap (fish sauce) and the two subsequent Chinese forms kéjāp (Guangdong) and ke-tsiap (Xiamen) influenced “ketchup.” However, the Chinese versions mean “eggplant juice” — no tomatoes to be found. “Ketchup” made its way to English by the late 17th century.

“Tattoo” is Polynesian in origin — specifically from the Tahitian tatau or Marquesan tatu, both of which mean “a mark made on skin.” It was adopted by English speakers in the mid-18th century. Prior to then, there was no convenient word for the concept. Instead, tattoos were referred to by names such as “printed marks,” which paraphrases the entry for Leviticus 19 in the King James Bible.

“Tornado” is believed to be borrowed from the Spanish tronada (“thunderstorm”). It made its way into English sometime in the mid-16th century, and came to refer to a violent windstorm by the 1620s. Up until the 17th century, English speakers spelled it as “tornatho” and “turnado” before settling on the spelling we still use.

In 1982, computer scientist Scott Fahlman created the emoticon — a series of characters representing a facial expression, such as 🙂 for happiness. These little text-based icons were effective, but in the years that followed, Japanese designers created a more detailed set of images for online communication. Though the images didn’t have a catchy name at first, that changed in 1997 with the introduction of a new term: “emoji.”

Lots of people think that “emoji” is derived from the English word “emotion,” but that’s a myth. “Emoji” is a Japanese word meaning “pictograph” that combines three individual components. In Japanese, e means “picture,” mo means “write,” and ji means “character.” All together, they create “emoji,” which, according to Merriam-Webster, refers to “any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in text fields in electronic communication.” These include winking faces, cartoon dogs, slices of pizza, and other colorful images. It’s merely a coincidence that “emoji” is so similar to the word “emotion.”

Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita is usually credited for helping to popularize emojis in 1999. He claims he was inspired to create emojis from “pictograms, manga, and all sorts of other sources.” But emojis — both the images and the term itself — predated Kurita’s work by a few years. One of the earliest known uses of “emoji” appears in the October 27, 1997 edition of Nikkei Weekly: “P-kies CD-ROM Emoji Word Processor software featuring more than 500 pictorial symbols has become a hit.” While the specific person responsible for coining “emoji” may not be known, the playful and catchy connotation of “emoji” (despite the very literal meaning) gave the term lasting power. 

Americans share a lot of similarities with our neighbors to the north, such as a mutual fondness for beer, maple syrup, and ice hockey. English is spoken in both countries, though there are ways in which the pronunciation and vocabulary differ (and French is also an official language in Canada). Let’s examine how the English language varies based on which side of the border you’re located on.

For the most part, Americans and Canadians pronounce words similarly, but slight differences in vowel pronunciation are more prominent in particular words. Saying the words “about” and “sorry” will signify a Canadian faster than wearing a maple leaf sweater. There’s a stereotype that Canadians pronounce “about” like “a boot,” but it’s actually closer to “a boat.” This change comes because Canadians tend to raise the /ou/ vowel sound, meaning the tongue sits higher in the mouth. All words containing “oat” or the /ou/ pronunciation follow this vowel pattern. 

Yes, Canadians do say “eh,” though it doesn’t come at the end of every sentence, as stereotypes might portray. “Eh” is an interjection that, according to Merriam-Webster, is “used especially in Canadian English in anticipation of the listener’s or reader’s agreement.” In other words, it’s like ending a sentence by asking, “Do you agree with what I just said?” or “Right?” 

Language-learning platform Babbel shared in this YouTube video that “eh” is akin to the Japanese hé or Portuguese né. It’s essentially a polite way to invite the listener to participate in the conversation. This plays off of another Canadian stereotype: politeness. Instead of just stating a fact to someone, Canadians might say “eh” to encourage a back-and-forth dialogue, which often leads to a more enjoyable and engaging conversation.

While we couldn’t possibly touch on every unique bit of Canadian vocabulary, there are a few notable terms used in everyday conversation. An American might be mystified by some of these slang terms, even though they’re English.

For instance, Canadians refer to CA$1 coins as “loonies,” as these coins feature the likeness of a bird called a loon. They also refer to CA$2 coins as “toonies,” a portmanteau of “two” and “loonie.” Americans might be confused by both the silly words and the larger coin denominations. 

Differences extend to the culinary world as well. When Canadians say “Caesar,” they might be ordering a salad, but they’re more likely ordering a popular cocktail containing vodka, tomato juice, and clam broth (similar to a bloody mary). Canadians also say “back bacon” rather than “Canadian bacon,” the former term being a literal reference to the part of the pig it comes from. And Canadians love Timmies, a coffee chain whose formal name is Tim Horton’s — don’t forget your Timbits (donut holes). 

Ask a Canadian to sing the alphabet and they’ll end with the letter “zed,” not “zee.” The letter “Z” comes from the Greek zeta, which was borrowed by the Romans who created the Latin alphabet that many English speakers rely on. It’s through this evolution that the majority of English speakers, including Canadians, Brits, Kiwis, and Aussies, pronounce “Z” as “zed.” 

The reason why Americans say “zee” has to do with a 19th-century effort to distinguish American English from British English. Lexicographer Noah Webster declared “zee” as the official pronunciation of the letter “Z,” and it stuck. But in Canada, it’s still “zed.”

Americans and Canadians spell a lot of words the same way, including ones that end in the suffix “-ize” (e.g., realize, theorize, etc.). While British people would spell those words ending with “-ise,” Canadians and Americans always use “-ize.” 

However, sometimes Canadian spelling differs from American spelling, as it tends to  align more closely with British English. This includes words such as “traveling” and “canceled” here in America, which would be spelled as “travelling” and “cancelled” in Canada. Canadians also follow British rules in regard to English words originally derived from French, such as “color” and “honor.” While Americans drop the “u” (again, thanks to Noah Webster), Canadians and Brits prefer to spell these words as “colour” and “honour.”