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.
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