Cyde Weys Musings

I happened to get in a discussion with a friend today about why some made-up phrases are inherently funnier than others. Pick a few random words, throw ‘em together, and regardless of whether they make sense together or not, the result is most likely not going to be a funny phrase. There’s an obviously an art to putting together funny phrases. Here are some ground rules to get you started.

First, go heavy on inherently funny words. There’s no hard or fast rule about it, but some words are simply inherently funnier than others. Inherently funny words are often funny merely because of the way they sound, not necessarily for what they represent. For example, underwear and underpants mean the same thing, but underpants is inherently far funnier. A few other inherently funny words: cow, pickle, Hoboken, gazebo. Just throw some inherently funny words together and you’re already well on your way to coming up with a funny phrase. Pickled Hoboken gazebo.

Besides the choice of words themselves, the other aspect to funny phrases is how well the words work together. This is where the real humor of funny phrases comes from. The words don’t necessarily have to be thematically related — and indeed, if you’re going for absurdity, they probably shouldn’t be. For instance, let’s say I want to build up a funny phrase around the word scrotum. What word works viscerally with scrotum in an absurd manner? If you said pinata, give yourself a gold star. Now you’re thinking funny. Mmmm, Scrotum Pinata.

There are all sorts of humorous relationships that you can take advantage of when binding your words together into phrases. Above, I use the notoriously delicate nature of the testicles along with something that is known for getting the crap beaten out of it. Don’t reach too far: the relationship should be immediately obvious, like it is with scrotum and pinata. Let’s try another one. What goes with the inherently funny word cactus? Well, cactuses are sharp, prickly, and unpleasant to touch. What works well with that? If you said vibrator, give yourself another gold star. Mmmm, Cactus Vibrator.

You’ll notice that, above, I’m using a generally crude sense of humor. But don’t think funny phrases only work if they’re crude. Indeed, they can be the height of culture and sophistication. That’s just not my cup of chai. So I’ll leave you with one more funny phrase that isn’t necessarily crude, merely anatomical. And apparently I’m the first one to ever utter it online. I mean, would you believe Google doesn’t have any search results for Kumquat Sphincter?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 22:10 and is filed under Humor. Keywords: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.