f you think about it, “understand” is a funny word.  Unlike “underarm” or “undercook” it does not make a lot of sense.  You have to wonder what standing has to do with comprehension.  And why under?  More curious is trying to figure out the opposite of understand.  Is it underlie, overstand, or overlie?  Or maybe it’s ununderstand, or just plain derstand.

There are lots of funny words in English, like “partake” which looks like it has something to do with golf, or “bigamist” which suggests a person with a sizeable problem, or “cockpit” which just begs to be fooled with.  The word “improper” is funny if you split the word after the first p (imagine someone who lassoes little demons.)

If you would like to see some examples of the word humor found in these pages    (Feel free to leave this sampler window on your desktop to return to anytime for amusement.)

But making fun of a word often requires that we ignore the word’s etymology—otherwise the amusement might be lost to reason.  For example, the word “surgery” begs the question “what surges?”  In fact, the word evolved from an old French word surigien with roots in old English as chirurgeon which came from the Greek cheirourgos (cheir, hand + ergon, work.)  That history may be interesting, but not very funny.

Why don't we put pants in the pantry? An amusing question—but not if you are aware that the origin of the word “pantry” is from the Middle English panetrie meaning “bread room” borrowed from the Old French paneterie the root of which comes from the Latin word for bread, panis.  Meanwhile the origin of “pants” is from Pantaleon, the name of a 4th-century saint who was favored by Venetians who, consequently, became known as Pantaloni.  In the 17th century, the French used the word pantalon to refer a particular style of tights resembling that worn by an old Venetian in an Italian play.  The word for tight fitting trousers came to the English as “pantaloons” and by 1850 was shortened to “pants.”

To be amused by the absurd looking word “unless” you must forget, or be unaware, that it comes from the phrase “upon less” and that it has nothing to do with the prefix “un.”  In general, to be tickled by odd looking words you must ignore the tug of times and tongues on their meanings.  That is why there is no consideration of word etymologies in this Barrel Full of Words.

All the words being poked fun at here are real dictionary words.  There are no made-up or misspelled words like punderful or punnishing.  You won’t find here, for example, a warped definition (which I call a goofinition) for “impasse” as a demon’s butt because it would have to be spelled impass, or a mock antonym for “stagnation” as “donation” because it would have to be doenation.  When made-up words do appear in this compilation to show the humor of an actual word (such as beforemath, the Phantom Antonym of “aftermath”), they appear in italics.

This collection also does not deal with verbal play on words like “the peepholes choice,” nor does it toy with nearly similar sounding words like “salary” and “celery,” or substituted homonyms like “cache” for “cash.”  All these kinds of playful oral twists may be entertaining but their number is astronomical.  However, the words that do appear in these pages should be enough to tickle your humorous humerus.

Listed below are all the categories of word humor contained at this site, each with a brief explanation. The list is provided as a side menu on each page of A Barrel Full of Words.  Placing the mouse cursor over any of the side menu items will display an example of the word humor found on that page.