THE TEN FUNNIEST WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (NOT)

A pair of University of Alberta researchers say they’ve analyzed what it is that make some words intrinsically funny, and they’ve come up with what they say are the funniest words in the English language. Psychologist Chris Westbury is co-author of a paper entitled “Wriggly, Squiffy, Lummox, and Boobs: What Makes Some Words Funny” published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. What makes a word funny, he found, is a combination of two factors — sound and meaning.
– Words likely to get a laugh tend to be associated with sex, bodily functions, good times, animals and insults
– If they’ve got the “oo” sound, that’s good
– So is a hard “kay” or an ending in “le”
– Double letters are also funny
So… the 10 funniest words in English from a sample of nearly 45,000 according to this guy: Upchuck, bubby, boff, wriggly, yaps, giggle, guffaw, puffball, jiggly and, er, cooch.
* Puffball. Stop. Please. You’re killing me.
* Are you telling me “dingus” doesn’t even rate?
* This is stupid. Everybody knows the funniest word of all is “spatula.”
* Never ask a scientist to study humor.
* What kind of dink thinks bubby is funny?
* The funniest word in this story? Calling these nitwits “researchers.”