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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

humour.

The quality of being amusing, comical, funny.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈhjuː.mə(ɹ)/Received-Pronunciation/ˈhjuːmɚ/General-American/ˈjuːmɚ/General-American
  1. The quality of being amusing, comical, funny.

    UK · uncountable · usually
    She has a great sense of humour, and I always laugh a lot whenever we get together.
    The sensitive subject was treated with humour, but in such way that no one was offended.
  2. A mood, especially a bad mood; a temporary state of mind or disposition brought upon by an event; an abrupt illogical inclination or whim.

    UK · uncountable · usually
    He was in a particularly vile humour that afternoon.
  3. Any of the fluids in an animal body, especially the four "cardinal humours" of blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm that were believed to control the health and mood of the human body.

    UK · archaic · historical · uncountable · usually
  4. Either of the two regions of liquid within the eyeball, the aqueous humour and vitreous humour.

    UK · uncountable · usually
  5. Moist vapour, moisture.

    UK · obsolete · uncountable · usually
Where this word comes from

From Middle English humour, from Old French humor, humour, from Latin hūmor, correctly ūmor (“liquid”), from hūmeō, correctly ūmeō (“to be moist”). The h in these words, which was silent in late Classical Latin, is folk etymological, due to the erroneous association with the word humus (“soil”). The shift in meaning "liquid" > "mood" is attributed to the classical system of physiology, where human behaviour is regulated by four bodily humours (fluids). The sense "mood" gave rise to the verb sense "to give in to someone's mood or whim" and, by narrowing of meaning, the sense "wit".

verb/ˈhjuː.mə(ɹ)/Received-Pronunciation/ˈhjuːmɚ/General-American/ˈjuːmɚ/General-American
  1. To pacify by indulging.

    UK · transitive
    I know you don't believe my story, but humour me for a minute and imagine it to be true.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English humour, from Old French humor, humour, from Latin hūmor, correctly ūmor (“liquid”), from hūmeō, correctly ūmeō (“to be moist”). The h in these words, which was silent in late Classical Latin, is folk etymological, due to the erroneous association with the word humus (“soil”). The shift in meaning "liquid" > "mood" is attributed to the classical system of physiology, where human behaviour is regulated by four bodily humours (fluids). The sense "mood" gave rise to the verb sense "to give in to someone's mood or whim" and, by narrowing of meaning, the sense "wit".

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.