English Dictionary

HUMOROUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does humorous mean? 

HUMOROUS (adjective)
  The adjective HUMOROUS has 1 sense:

1. full of or characterized by humorplay

  Familiarity information: HUMOROUS used as an adjective is very rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


HUMOROUS (adjective)


Sense 1

Meaning:

Full of or characterized by humor

Synonyms:

humorous; humourous

Context example:

in a humorous vein

Similar:

bantering; facetious; tongue-in-cheek (cleverly amusing in tone)

buffoonish; clownish; clownlike; zany (like a clown)

amusing; comic; comical; funny; laughable; mirthful; risible (arousing or provoking laughter)

droll (comical in an odd or whimsical manner)

dry; ironic; ironical; wry (humorously sarcastic or mocking)

farcical; ludicrous; ridiculous (broadly or extravagantly humorous; resembling farce)

Gilbertian (wildly comic and improbable as in Gilbert and Sullivan operas)

hilarious; screaming; uproarious (marked by or causing boisterous merriment or convulsive laughter)

jesting; jocose; jocular; joking (characterized by jokes and good humor)

killing; sidesplitting (very funny)

seriocomic; seriocomical (mixing the serious with the comic with comic predominating)

slapstick (characterized by horseplay and physical action)

tragicomic; tragicomical (having pathetic as well as ludicrous characteristics)

waggish (witty or joking)

witty (combining clever conception and facetious expression)

Also:

pleasing (giving pleasure and satisfaction)

Antonym:

humorless (lacking humor)

Derivation:

humor (the trait of appreciating (and being able to express) the humorous)

humor (the quality of being funny)

humor (a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter)

humorousness (the trait of merry joking)


 Context examples 


Another check was in the same mail, sent from a New York weekly in payment for some humorous verse which had been accepted months before.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

This relationship means that low and high scores obtained in such personality traits are respectively linked to lower or higher propensities to make humorous comments aimed at building and strengthening social relationships.

(Self-defeating humour promotes psychological well-being, University of Granada)

I have tried to imitate here Lord Roxton's jerky talk, his short, strong sentences, the half-humorous, half-reckless tone that ran through it all.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Above, was the high, broad forehead of the philosopher, with keen, humorous eyes looking out from under thick, strong brows.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My friend did not appear to be depressed by his failure, but shrugged his shoulders in half-humorous resignation.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

So to Baden I went, after dispatching to Holmes an account of all my proceedings and receiving in reply a telegram of half-humorous commendation.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was a man of huge stature, dark-eyed and red-headed, with a peculiar half-humorous, half-defiant expression upon his bold, well-marked features.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If the part is trifling she will have more credit in making something of it; and if she is so desperately bent against everything humorous, let her take Cottager's speeches instead of Cottager's wife's, and so change the parts all through; he is solemn and pathetic enough, I am sure.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors' Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The Professor has a strongly humorous side, and I could from old knowledge detect a trace of its origin in his answer:—My young sir, I do not ask so much as that—not the last!

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"Talking a mile a minute." (English proverb)

"Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf." (Native American proverb, Cree)

"Example is better than precept." (Arabic proverb)

"Creaking carts last longest." (Dutch proverb)



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