It doesn’t seem like this should be a difficult question.
When someone tells a good joke, or when you look at a funny cartoon, listen to a good stand-up routine, or watch funny cat/dog videos and you laugh, what is the name of the emotion you are experiencing?
I can’t seem to come up with anything except “amused.” But if you’re rolling in the aisles, slapping your thigh, tears running down your face, and basically laughing your head off, *amused *doesn’t seem to capture it adequately.
“Merry” and “gleeful” cover larger events than simply guffawing at a great story or watching the thousand clowns pile out of the tiny car. I’m trying to narrow it down to simply *laughing at something funny. *
Humor is based on surprise. Laughter is the symptom of the relief that floods your system when you find out that the surprise is not a life-threatening one.
This is a theory that I heard once, and I like it. It’s why we laugh after someone has jumped out of a closet at us and then we realize that it’s just a joke. Of course, under modern circumstances, the “danger” is just your inaccurate interpretation of what is coming next.
Yeah, but that laugh is different. It’s a nervous laugh, not the boisterous one we give when something is hilarious.
One word I’ve seen used before is “tickled”, with a more extreme version being “tickled to death.” Unfortunately, this is also often used for just being really happy.
Tickled occurred to me, too. And relief can apply, but I was looking for a word that uniquely identifies the state of being amused and tickled to death. Like gleeful and merry, relief also applies widely in other situations not related to humor (some come to mind at this very moment…).
There may not be a word.
If you speak another language, does your language have such a word?
Well, there are laughs of delight (at babies, animals), laughs of satisfaction (when your least favorite politician falls into the reflecting pool), and as Roderick Femm said, laughs of relief. I can recall laughing with a feeling of resignation, too, when there just wasn’t any point in fighting “it” any more.
My daughter and I used to share a particularly helpless, debilitating, almost painful laughter that was purely a recognition that we saw things the same twisted way. I have no idea what emotion that would go with, though. It was almost like all of those mentioned in my first paragraph rolled together.
I agree. Some things there just isn’t a word for. Like, there are adjectives for the feelings of needing to eat (“I’m hungry”), to drink (“I’m thirsty”), to sleep (“I’m sleepy” or “I’m tired”), but not of needing to pee.
I vote for bliss. During that time you’re having that great laugh, you can’t think of anything else and the world seems to melt away. And after, you sigh.
"bliss[ blis ]
noun
supreme happiness; utter joy or contentment:"
Exhiliration. You’re excited/happy/elated that you ‘got it,’ you figured it out, you hit the curve ball, you connected two concepts in a way that makes sense, etc.
God, Thelma we think alike! I was just pondering this very subject last night. I’ve had an interesting week, to say the least. Someone messaged me a funny tale in several messages. I was crying it was so funny to me. Deep belly laughs and spasms. It was hilarious. Now I think about it, it was just mildly funny. I was tickled. But that’s not the word, at all.
I will coin a word. Yes, I will. ‘Hilariousity’
Yep.
::::drops mic::::
(All you wordy people don’t come tell me the word means something else, I choose to believe I coined it, and I’ve had a bad week, so don’t rain on my parade, plz:))