What is humour?

Humour

Humour or humor (see spelling differences) is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humors (Latin: humor, "body fluid"), control human health and emotion.

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Famous quotes containing the word humour:

    Right as the humour of melancholy
    Causeth full many a man in sleep to cry
    For fear of blacke bears, or bulles black,
    Or elles blacke devils will them take.
    Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)

    The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

    Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humour is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.
    Frank Muir (b. 1920)