Sunday, November 16, 2003
MST3K's Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy on how to be funny.
Steve's Favorite Words
The first link above was a small interview with two of the funniest guys who have ever been on the culture radar (the number of funny guys off the culture radar is near-infinite, but you wouldn't know who I was talking about), and about humor and their previous ten-year jobs making fun of bad movies through the use of puppets. Somewhere in there Kevin Murphy talks abous using silly-sounding old words, judiciously mind you, to lend X-tra humorous punch in many situations. (Another way to do this is to use blatant ad-speak, like "natural goodness" and "X-tra" at odd times) He is exactly right, and it got me to thinking about compiling a list of such words.
A quick Google search turned up no definitive lists, but it did turn up Steve's Favorite Words (second link above), which is a list of a moderate number of words, many with scatalogical import (those words are a third class of funny verbiage), but with a good number falling into the category to which I refer. Here are the ones I saw from his site (in reverse alphabetical order for no reason I care to discuss):
Tomfoolery, Smorgasboard, Skedaddle, Scumptious, Rigamorole, Ragamuffin, Lollygagging, Humdinger, Discombobulated, Collywobble, Boondoggle, Bamboozle
Notice that all these words are three syllables and up. (Well, "scrumptious" has two, but I'm only including it because it looked sad and dejected not to get to come along on the field trip.) Most humor depends on quick, sharp words in the punchline, but these terms have their place as well, and you should hug them. Just remember not to overuse them, as it doesn't take many Ragamuffins in casual conversation to earn you a punch in the gut. From experience.
(A fourth class of funny words: short (max two syllables), unlikely-sounding words. The canonical example is kumquat.)
