Humour is often defined by those who use it as an adjective meaning “having a good sense; humorous”. Humour is the tendency for experiences to elicit humour and offer entertainment. The word comes from the Greek root humus, meaning “of the flesh”. Humour is associated with Alexander the Great’s use of humour in battle. According to Sophocles, in his play Antigone, the hero is described as having “a great vein of wind-humour in her breast”, which contributed to her being able to resist blows intended to kill her.
Humour can be used to defuse: a tense situation, and sometimes to diffuse aggressive behaviour. It can also attribute to a sense of reward, as in “I’ll laugh at your joke” or “You’ll never find me”. Conversely, humour can also attribute to the opposite of aggression, i.e. “jealousy leads to anger” or “anger leads to tempers”.
Humour can be displayed in many different ways: Humour is part of the act of sharing in an amusing or insightful online discussion, a funny video on YouTube or a witty comment on a blog entry. To display the ability of humour, a person must first agree that they have such a skill and then commit to using this skill. This article presents some simple ways to bring humour into everyday life.
The most common type of humour is humorous speech: For example, a sentence containing the words “Oh! What a drag” is a humoured statement. On the other hand, a sentence containing the words “Well, it’s not exactly a drag” is probably a non-humorous statement. Humour is usually present in written forms, but can also be expressed through sarcasm or context-based jokes.
A third type of humour is sarcasm: sarcasm is delivered with wit, but does not rely on exaggeration for its effect. For example, if a person says something like “You can’t expect to win at chess”, this is a sarcasm – it is not genuine humour. sarcasm is a great way to get people talking about topics that might otherwise be stagnant and boring.
A fourth type of humour is called irony. This type of humour relies on the exaggeration of everyday situations. For example, if a person were to say “The boss is rude”, this is considered an ironic way of stating that fact. It is unclear whether this type of humour is always intentional and therefore lies in the grey area between genuine and sarcastic humour, although the boundaries between these types of humour have become increasingly blurred over time.