HOME

A basic definition of these two terms would be that humour is the triggering of a person's laughter or amusement by an act or event. Comedy is the exploitation of such acts and events to provide entertainment.

As a broad heading, humour and comedy can take many forms. Humour in its simplest form will take the shape of some random event that happens, which will be seen as funny by the person witnessing it. A good example might be something such as watching a dog chases its tail or a person falling into a body of water. Comedy is far less simplistic and will entail elaborate setup such as the famous the famous War of the Worlds hoax pulled off under the Direction of Orson Welles in 1938. Other forms of humour and comedy are darker in nature, such as sarcasm which is often aimed at calling ridicule upon a target to cause distress. Satire would be its comedy form, which is the subtle way of drawing the attention of the listener or watcher to some specific deficiency or wrongness in a clearly symbolised target.

People are often deemed to have (or not have) a sense of humour; this is used to indicate that a person does (or does not) have the ability to appreciate the expression of humour through active comedy. In many cases a person is attributed as having no sense of humour when they indeed do have one, it is just that the form of comedy being utilised to express something funny to them is not compatible with their own ideals.