Humour in English: 15 Words for Jokes and Laughter

A man walks down the street checking himself out in every shop window. "he thinks he's the bee's knees", one of our speakers says — until he steps into one of the little holes around the pavement trees, and bashes his head. "it was absolutely hilarious." Katie asks the obvious question: "And did everybody around start laughing?" The answer is that there was nobody else there. That's where this episode on humour starts, and it doesn't get any more dignified.

What you'll hear in this episode

There are two unscripted conversations. In the first, Katie and Stuart compare the kinds of comedy they actually find funny. Katie admits she prefers physical humour — someone falling over — to clever humour, and Stuart asks, "You're a bit more slapstick are you?" They move on to old school practical jokes: a bucket of water balanced on a door, or "a whoopee cushion". Then Katie asks whether sarcastic humour is funny to him, and gets a nicely contradictory answer: "lowest form of wit I believe, but also the most amusing as well." Sarcasm at school, he says, was a phase — "To the point of irritation." In a second clip they draw a line between teasing someone about always being late and making fun of how someone looks: "specky four eyes" for anyone with glasses.

The second conversation is Katie and Hannah on laughing itself. One of the speakers confesses that her laugh "has been described as a cackle" and also "compared to a machine gun". They discuss why a snigger sounds unpleasant — "I don't really like people who snigger" — and go through the stages of a laughter yoga class, from embarrassed smiles to grinning to giggling to everyone roaring with laughter: "you just find that you catch it, it's contagious." Hannah notices the effect immediately: "Like you're grinning now…talking about it." She's also honest about witty people: "I believe everything I'm told", and sometimes "I don't get what they're laughing about."

Quick facts

Episode	3.6 — Humour/Humor
Pack	Vocabulary and Pronunciation 3
Level	3
Duration	16 minutes 57 seconds
New words	Fifteen
Audio	Free to download
Workbook	Included in the paid all-in-one pack (€39)

What you'll learn

Each conversation comes with a listening task: you hear the clips first and pick out the humour words, then check meanings and work on pronunciation, repeating after the beep. The teaching sections are precise about the bits learners usually get wrong. Hilarious has four syllables with the stress on the second — not the first. Witty takes the stress on the first syllable. Roar uses the same long /ɔː/ as the noise a lion makes, which is exactly the image used to explain it. You'll listen to the /mj/ in amusing, the weak /ə/ at the end of snigger, and the second syllable of anecdote.

There's also useful work on words that look interchangeable but aren't. To tease and to make fun of share a definition, yet the conversation shows how tone decides whether either is acceptable. Amusing and hilarious are graded for you in a single model sentence: "It won't make you roar with laughter, but it is quite amusing." And you'll hear the difference between three kinds of laugh — a giggle, a snigger, a roar — described by people who clearly have opinions about all three.

The vocabulary

hilarious (adjective) – very funny; used when the man walks into the tree
amusing (adjective) – entertaining / funny; how the first story is introduced
sarcastic (adjective) – funny by saying the opposite of what you really mean
to make fun of someone – to joke and laugh about someone, maybe because of what they are wearing or something they did
to tease someone – same idea, discussed alongside teasing about physical appearance
to make someone laugh – to do or say something funny, so that people laugh
a practical joke (noun) – a trick or joke designed to make someone look silly
to play a joke on someone – the action of doing that trick
an anecdote (noun) – a funny story that happened to you or someone you know
to giggle (verb) – to laugh a kind of laugh, like a child's, usually when you should be quiet
to roar with laughter – to laugh loudly, from the chest
to snigger (verb) – to laugh quietly, and in a negative way
to grin (verb) – to smile widely with your teeth showing
to have a good sense of humour – to be able to laugh at things and to be funny
witty (adjective) – to be funny in a clever way

In the workbook

The workbook carries the full transcript of both conversations, so you can go back and see exactly which word was used where, plus a glossary with all fifteen entries, phonemic transcriptions and definitions. Then three practice sections. Practice 1 asks quick comparison questions — which is louder, to roar with laughter or to snigger? Is a practical joke witty? If someone plays a practical joke on you and you get angry, have you got a good sense of humour? Practice 2 is a gap-fill of six sentences, including "They were _ and _ like naughty children." Practice 3 is a pronunciation sort: mark every word containing an /ɪ/ sound, then every word containing a /z/ sound, and notice that amusing has both. Full answers are provided at the back.

This workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, which covers every episode across the full range of levels.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Common questions

Is the audio free?

Yes. The English conversations are free to download. The workbook that goes with this unit comes with the paid pack at €39.

Is the conversation scripted?

The conversations are unscripted — that's why you get the false starts, the overlapping and the laughing. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

What level is this?

Level 3, from Vocabulary and Pronunciation 3. You'll need to follow fast, natural speech, but every target word is explained and drilled afterwards.

Humour or humor?

Both. The unit uses the British spelling humour; American English writes humor. The pronunciation is unchanged.

What if I can't catch the words the first time?

That's expected. Listen once for gist, then read the transcript in the workbook and listen again — the second pass is where the fifteen words start to stand out.

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