
The funniest nonsense words tended to be those that reminded people of real words that are considered rude or offensive. The study used a computer program to generate pronounceable nonsense words that followed typical English spelling conventions and tested them for their perceived comedic value to human test subjects. Rudeness and entropy Ī 2015 study published in the Journal of Memory and Language examined the humor of nonsense words. Beard's first book was The 100 Funniest Words in English, and among his own selected words are "absquatulate", "bowyangs", "collywobbles", "fartlek", "filibuster", "gongoozle", "hemidemisemiquaver", and "snollygoster". Robert Beard, a professor emeritus of linguistics at Bucknell University, told an interviewer that "The first thing people always write in about is funny words".

The other duck said: "I was going to say that!" His LaughLab tested the degree of funniness among a family of jokes based on animal sounds the joke rated the funniest was also the one with the most k sounds: Richard Wiseman, a professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, conducted a small experiment to determine whether words with a k sound were actually considered funnier than others for English speakers. Cockroach is funny – not if you get 'em, only if you say 'em.


You know what words are funny and which words are not funny. Vaudeville words can be found in Neil Simon's 1972 play The Sunshine Boys, in which an aging comedian gives a lesson to his nephew on comedy, saying that words with k sounds are funny: įifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things.
