Humour

How to spell humour

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce humour

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does humour mean?

1. nounThe quality of being amusing, or the ability to find things funny.
2. nounA person's state of mind or temporary mood.
3. verbTo comply with someone's wishes in order to keep them content.

Humour in a sentence

• noun

  The speaker leavened the financial report with a touch of dry humour.

• noun

  The manager arrived in a foul humour after the cancelled flight.

• verb

  The nurses agreed to humour the elderly patient and let him keep his routine.

• noun

  A good sense of humour helped the team cope with the long deadline.

• noun

  She was in good humour once the contract was finally signed.

• verb

  It was easier to humour the client than to argue over a minor detail.

Where does humour come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin humor, which literally meant 'liquid' or 'moisture', and was related to humere 'to be wet'. In ancient and medieval medicine the four 'humours' were the bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile) thought to govern a person's health and disposition, so a balance of these fluids was believed to shape someone's temperament. From that medical sense the word came to mean a person's mood or frame of mind, and by the late 1500s it had broadened to mean a whimsical or comic turn of mind, and eventually the quality of being amusing. English took it through Old French humour from the Latin, which is why the British and Canadian spelling keeps the French-influenced -our ending while American English trims it to -or. The same moisture root survives in 'humid', a useful reminder that humour once had nothing to do with jokes at all.

How the word is built

• humour (from Latin humor: liquid, moisture)
• -our (British noun spelling of the Latin -or ending)

British and American spelling

Humour is the British spelling. American English spells it humor.