Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Causing laughter or amusement.
  • adjective Making or given to making amusing jokes or witticisms.
  • adjective Appropriate as the subject of a joke; deserving of a joke. Used in negative sentences to express disapproval or to emphasize the seriousness of something.
  • adjective Difficult to account for; unusual or odd.
  • adjective Suspiciously odd.
  • adjective Counterfeit or fraudulent.
  • adjective Informal Somewhat ill, painful, or abnormal.
  • adjective Offensively forward or disrespectful.
  • adjective Contrary to one's demands or expectations.
  • noun A joke; a witticism.
  • noun Comic strips.
  • noun The section of a newspaper containing comic strips.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Such as to afford fun or excite mirth; amusing; comical; ludicrous.
  • Such as to cause surprise or perplexity; curious; strange; odd; queer: as, it is funny he never told me of his marriage.
  • Synonyms Comical, Laughable, etc. See ludicrous.
  • noun A light clinker-built pleasure-boat, with a pair of sculls. It is long and narrow, and is used for racing.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun engraving A clinkerbuit, narrow boat for sculling.
  • adjective Droll; comical; amusing; laughable; inciting laughter.
  • adjective See crazy bone, under Crazy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun humorous A joke.
  • noun UK A narrow boat for sculling.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective not as expected
  • adjective beyond or deviating from the usual or expected
  • adjective experiencing odd bodily sensations
  • noun an account of an amusing incident (usually with a punch line)
  • adjective arousing or provoking laughter

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From fun.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From fun +‎ -y.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Perhaps a jocular use of funny. See above.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word funny.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • strange and ha ha ;-)

    December 10, 2006

  • like a clown

    October 11, 2007

  • One of my work colleagues told a funny joke yesterday.

    October 29, 2008