Is there a word you say, and just start laughing? Well thankfully, science has stepped in to study the funny words. And according to a pair of researchers at the Department of Psychology of the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, the funniest word is in the English language is BOOTY.
“The appreciation of humor is a fundamental, yet mysterious, part of human cognition,” the researchers said in the article 'Behavior Research Methods' that “the aim of providing this data is to help enrich the resources available for understanding the cognitive, developmental, and applied aspects of humor.”
The team gathered a list of 4997 common words from past research, and after a practice session, asked participants to rate 200 words randomly selected from the larger pool on a 1 (humorless) to a 5 (humorous) scale. The participants also listed their demographics. The study ended up including 821 participants.
The funniest word in the study: “booty.” It narrowly beat out words like booby, hooter, nitwit, twit, waddle, tinkle, bebop, and egghead.
Mike and Carla's listeners added: Dongle, canoodle, doozie, goombah, squeegee, and turd.
