Words may be considered inherently funny, for reasons ranging from onomatopoeia to phonosemantics. Such words have been used by a range of influential comedians, including W. C. Fields, to enhance the humor of their routines.
For example, the BBC Radio 4 panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue includes an occasional round called "Straight Face", in which the panelists take turns saying a single word. A player is eliminated from the game if anyone in the audience laughs at their word ("even the merest titter"). The winner is the last player standing.
It is part of the mythology of actors and writers that the consonant plosives (so called because they start suddenly or "explosively") p, b, t, d, k, and g are the funniest sounds in the English language.[1]
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According to Douglas Adams, the idea that the answer to "the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42 is funny because it is an "ordinary, smallish" number.[2]
In the 1996 video Caesar's Writers, former writers for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows discuss a skit in which Imogene Coca places a bet on a roulette wheel. The writers tried out several numbers before deciding "thirty-two" was the funniest number Coca could say.[3] Neil Simon, one of the writers, went on to write Laughter on the 23rd Floor, based on his experiences writing for Caesar. He claimed the 23 in the play's title was a transposition of 32. Carl Reiner created the Dick Van Dyke Show based on his experiences as a writer for "Your Show of Shows." In a first season episode, "The Curious Thing About Women," Morey Amsterdam's character, Buddy, explains that a package in a comedy skit they are writing should contain 32 pounds of hair, rather than 15, because "32 has always been a funnier number. I hear 32, I get hysterical!"
Comedian and singer-songwriter "Weird Al" Yankovic uses the number 27 prominently in his parody songs and videos because, according to him, "twenty-seven is a funny number."[4][5]
On the DVD commentary for the British sitcom I'm Alan Partridge, its writers put forward their own theory of funny numbers, going against the more common view that smaller, specific numbers are funny and instead employing large, round numbers (e.g. "a million pounds"). Steve Coogan, creator and star of the sitcom, said in an interview: "... like the number 37. Everyone uses that as a funny number. It's used quite a lot as a random comedy number, like 'that's the 37th time this has happened.' People should use random numbers more. Like 'fifty.' Alan Partridge's assistant is fifty. That was her age. And it sounded funny; I would say, 'this is my assistant Lynn, fifty.' "[6]
Words may be invented to sound funny. Instances include many works by Dr. Seuss; Goon Show scripts, which often included funny nonsense words, such as ploogie, plinge, lurgy (lurgi), ying-tong-iddle-i-poh and needle-nardle-noo; and the Knights who say Ni skit from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.[7]
The notion of the inherently funny word should not be confused with situations when a certain word sounds funny when unexpectedly used in an inappropriate situation.
For example, the absurdist superhero The Tick, when required to choose a battle cry, chooses "Spoon!", while in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, the "rudest word in the Universe" is revealed to be "Belgium".