Origin Story
It may surprise you that "humor" once meant a fluid inside the body. The Latin umor meant "moisture" or "body fluid." In old medicine, it was believed that the balance of four bodily fluids — blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile — determined a person's mood and temperament. So to say someone was "in a good humor" originally meant that their fluids were well balanced and their spirits were high. From there humor came to mean "mood, temperament," and eventually developed into its modern sense of "wit, comedy" — the quality that makes people laugh with delight.
Even today the English phrase "in a good humor" means "in a cheerful mood," preserving the old sense. The medical term aqueous humor, naming the fluid inside the eye, likewise still carries humor's original meaning of "body fluid."
-
Online Etymology Dictionaryhumor (n.): mid-14c., "fluid or juice of an animal or plant," from Latin umor "body fluid"; in old medicine, one of the four body fluids whose relative proportions were thought to determine state of mind and general health
-
Merriam-Webster Dictionaryhumor: Middle English humour, from Anglo-French, from Latin humor, umor moisture, fluid; from the medieval physiology of the four humors
-
Oxford English Dictionaryhumour: from Latin umor "moisture," referring to the four bodily fluids believed to determine temperament
Word Evolution
Words from the Same Root
Memory Hook
Remember that humor originally meant "body fluid." It shares the same "moisture" root as humid.
""The word for laughter was once a single stream of fluid flowing through the body.""
