Jocularity, Jocularity

[For those disappointed this isn't an Easter post, please see this post.]

Tomorrow being April Fool's Day it is only fitting that we address jocularity today. Whenever I hear that word I am reminded of the character Father Francis Mulcahy, played by William Christopher in the television show M*A*S*H. The gang was doing imitations at a party and Col. Potter (played by Henry Morgan) did an imitation of Father Mulcahy and said "jocularity, jocularity". It is a particularly appropriate expression to illustrate how uncomfortable with humor the good Father was.

While we've already covered chuckle and chortle there are some funny words (funny among them) that we haven't covered, and we certainly should take a look at fool.

So let's start with the apparently easy ones: fool and funny.

Fool is a word that can be used as a noun, verb or adjective. In April Fool's Day it is ostensibly a verb, as in to fool someone with a trick. This post is not one of them. The word fool has a long history, beginning with its entry as a noun in the late 13th century. As a noun its primary meaning is "silly or stupid person", but it still retains a secondary meaning of a professional jester, a meaning it first gained in the late 14th century, when it may have been used either to describe an entertainer or an "amusing lunatic" as etymonline.com has it. Sometimes the two are difficult to differentiate even now. It originally came to English from Old French, where the word fol referred to a madman, insane person, rogue, idiot or jester. The Old French got it from the Latin word follis, which describes the blacksmith's bellows and when applied to people was an apt description for an empty-headed windbag, which these days also sounds like a politician.

The word funny is a much more recent immigrant, having first appeared in its adjective form in 1756. The original noun form, fun, is not much older, having arrived in 1727 and originally meant "trick or amusement,"  a very appropriate meaning for April Fool's Day. Funny originally meant (and still does) humorous, and didn't gain the meaning "odd" until 1806, having originated in the southern U.S., although there is nothing to suggest there are more odd people in the southern U.S. than elsewhere. Its etymology is uncertain.

Speaking of humorous, the word humor came to English as a physiological term in the mid-14th century. It meant "fluid or juice of an animal or plan" and came from the Old North French word humour, which came from the Old French word humor, which came from the Latin word umor that mean "body fluid." How did it come to mean something comic causing amusement? Since the prevailing wisdom at that time was that body fluids determined state of mind, humor came by the 1520s to refer to state of mind, and by the 1560s to a sense of whim or caprice, and by the 1680s to its current primary meaning. Apparently the pronunciation of the initial h is of recent vintage, and has predominated much more so than has the initial h in the word herb; honor still retains the silent h. Hinteresting, eh?

And we never got to jocularity or jocose. Wait until next week.