Back to Hiccoughs page Museum catalogue John Higgins main page

funny

The word funny has two meanings: 'unusual' and 'amusing'. This gives rise to the common question, "Do you mean funny peculiar or funny ha-ha?" One might have expected the words odd or strange to have supplanted funny with first meaning by now.

Another oddity about this word is that it does not appear to be associated in meaning with fun. This leads to embarrassing misunderstandings when, for instance a learner says "Thank you very much for the weekend, Mrs Higgins. It was very funny." Learners would expect the word to have a main meaning of 'enjoyable', but for this you have to say "great fun" and not "very funny".