humour
n 1: a characteristic (habitual or relatively temporary) state
of feeling; "whether he praised or cursed me depended on
his temper at the time"; "he was in a bad humor" [syn:
temper, mood, humor, humour]
2: a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has
the power to evoke laughter [syn: wit, humor, humour,
witticism, wittiness]
3: (Middle Ages) one of the four fluids in the body whose
balance was believed to determine your emotional and physical
state; "the humors are blood and phlegm and yellow and black
bile" [syn: humor, humour]
4: the liquid parts of the body [syn: liquid body substance,
bodily fluid, body fluid, humor, humour]
5: the quality of being funny; "I fail to see the humor in it"
[syn: humor, humour]
6: the trait of appreciating (and being able to express) the
humorous; "she didn't appreciate my humor"; "you can't
survive in the army without a sense of humor" [syn: humor,
humour, sense of humor, sense of humour]
v 1: put into a good mood [syn: humor, humour]
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Humor \Hu"mor\, n. [OE. humour, OF. humor, umor, F. humeur, L.
humor, umor, moisture, fluid, fr. humere, umere, to be moist.
See Humid.] [Written also humour.]
1. Moisture, especially, the moisture or fluid of animal
bodies, as the chyle, lymph, etc.; as, the humors of the
eye, etc.
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Note: The ancient physicians believed that there were four
humors (the blood, phlegm, yellow bile or choler, and
black bile or melancholy), on the relative proportion
of which the temperament and health depended.
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2. (Med.) A vitiated or morbid animal fluid, such as often
causes an eruption on the skin. "A body full of humors."
--Sir W. Temple.
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3. State of mind, whether habitual or temporary (as formerly
supposed to depend on the character or combination of the
fluids of the body); disposition; temper; mood; as, good
humor; ill humor.
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Examine how your humor is inclined,
And which the ruling passion of your mind.
--Roscommon.
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A prince of a pleasant humor. --Bacon.
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I like not the humor of lying. --Shak.
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4. pl. Changing and uncertain states of mind; caprices;
freaks; vagaries; whims.
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Is my friend all perfection, all virtue and
discretion? Has he not humors to be endured?
--South.
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5. That quality of the imagination which gives to ideas an
incongruous or fantastic turn, and tends to excite
laughter or mirth by ludicrous images or representations;
a playful fancy; facetiousness.
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For thy sake I admit
That a Scot may have humor, I'd almost said wit.
--Goldsmith.
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A great deal of excellent humor was expended on the
perplexities of mine host. --W. Irving.
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Aqueous humor, Crystalline humor or Crystalline lens,
Vitreous humor. (Anat.) See Eye.
Out of humor, dissatisfied; displeased; in an unpleasant
frame of mind.
Syn: Wit; satire; pleasantry; temper; disposition; mood;
frame; whim; fancy; caprice. See Wit.
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hacker humour
humor
humour
A distinctive style of shared intellectual humour found among
hackers, having the following marked characteristics:
1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and
humour having to do with confusion of metalevels (see meta).
One way to make a hacker laugh: hold a red index card in front
of him/her with "GREEN" written on it, or vice-versa (note,
however, that this is funny only the first time).
2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual
constructs, such as specifications (see write-only memory),
standards documents, language descriptions (see INTERCAL),
and even entire scientific theories (see quantum
bogodynamics, computron).
3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre,
ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.
4. Fascination with puns and wordplay.
5. A fondness for apparently mindless humour with subversive
currents of intelligence in it - for example, old Warner
Brothers and Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers,
the early B-52s, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Humour
that combines this trait with elements of high camp and
slapstick is especially favoured.
6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated
ideas in Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See has the X
nature, Discordianism, zen, ha ha only serious, AI
koan.
See also filk and retrocomputing. If you have an itchy
feeling that all 6 of these traits are really aspects of one
thing that is incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you
are (a) correct and (b) responding like a hacker. These
traits are also recognizable (though in a less marked form)
throughout science-fiction fandom.
(1995-12-18)
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