quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- fun
- fun: [17] A fun was originally a ‘trick, hoax, practical joke’: ‘A Hackney Coachman he did hug her, and was not this a very good Fun?’ Thomas D’Urfey, Pills to Purge Melancholy 1719. It came from the contemporary verb fun ‘cheat, hoax’, which was presumably a variant of the Middle English verb fon ‘make a fool of’. This in turn was a verbal use of the noun fon ‘fool’, probable origin of modern English fond.
The current sense of fun, ‘amusement, merriment’, did not develop until the 18th century. The derived adjective funny, in the sense ‘amusing’, was roughly contemporary with it; ‘strange, odd’ is an early 19th-century semantic development.
=> fond - gag (n.2)
- "a joke," 1863, especially a practical joke, probably related to theatrical sense of "matter interpolated in a written piece by the actor" (1847); or from the sense "made-up story" (1805); or from slang verbal sense of "to deceive, take in with talk" (1777), all of which perhaps are from gag (v.) on the notion of "to stuff, fill" (see gag (v.)). Gagster "comedian" is by 1932.
- joke (n.)
- 1660s, joque, "a jest, something done to excite laughter," from Latin iocus "joke, sport, pastime," from PIE root *yek- (1) "to speak" (cognates: Breton iez "language," Old High German jehan "to say," German Beichte "confession").
Originally a colloquial or slang word. Meaning "something or someone not to be taken seriously" is from 1791. Practical joke "trick played on someone for the sake of a laugh at his expense" is from 1804 (earlier handicraft joke, 1741). Black joke is old slang for "smutty song" (1730s), from use of that phrase in the refrain of a then-popular song as a euphemism for "the monosyllable."