Men find ‘booty’ funny, women not so much - Hindustan Times
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Men find ‘booty’ funny, women not so much

Aug 03, 2017 10:43 AM IST

Research into what people find funny shows that men and women are likely to laugh at different words. Men prefer booty, booby and tit while women fall for giggle, beast and circus.

New research into the funniest words in the English language shows that the words booty, tit and booby tickle people’s funny bones the most. In an online survey 821 participants were shown 4997 randomly selected words and asked to rate the words on a scale from 1 t o 5 on how humorous they thought each word was.

Reseachers conducted an online survey to find out what words people find funny and came up with some surprising results.(Shutterstock/ representative image))
Reseachers conducted an online survey to find out what words people find funny and came up with some surprising results.(Shutterstock/ representative image))

The participants did not necessarily reflect Indian sensibilities because they were entirely recruited through the Amazon Turk website.

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Noticeably there was a difference in the set of words that male and female participants rated as most humorous. Men thought words like orgy and bondage both references to sexual activities were funny. While for women giggle, beast and circus were likely to get the most laughs.

Among the participants 58% were female and the rest male.

There was also a shade of difference of opinion among older and younger people. The participants were between 18-78 years of age with an average age of 35 years. Folks aged 32 years and below found words like goatee, joint and gangster funny, possibly reflecting their familiarity with the words while older people were likely to find words like squint, jingle, burlesque and pong hilarious.

Things that people found completely mirthless: rape, torture, torment, gunshot and death.

The study was conducted by Tomas Engelthaler and Thomas Hills in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick and published in Behavior Research Method.

The Top Twelve

Booty

Tit

Booby

Hooter

Nitwit

Twit

Waddle

Tinkle

Bebop

Egghead

Ass

Twerp

The Bottom Twelve

Rape

Torture

Torment

Gunshot

Death

Nightmare

War

Trauma

Rapist

Distrust

Deathbed

Pain

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Malavika Vyawahare tells science and environment stories using words, photos and multimedia. She studied environmental journalism at Columbia University and is based in Delhi.

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