sly, how would one define humor? When in
doubt, consult the dictionary, is, as always, an excellent motto, and,
following it, we find that our trustworthy friend, Noah Webster, does
not fail us. Here is his definition of humor, ready to hand: humor is
"the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating
ludicrous or absurdly incongruous elements in ideas, situations,
happenings, or acts," with the added information that it is
distinguished from wit as "less purely intellectual and having more
kindly sympathy with human nature, and as often blended with pathos." A
friendly rival in lexicography defines the same prized human attribute
more lightly as "a facetious turn of thought," or more specifically in
literature, as "a sportive exercise of the imagination that is apparent
in the choice and treatment of an idea or theme." Isn't there something
about that word "sportive," on the lips of so learned an authority,
that tickles the fancy--appeals to the sense of humor?

Yet if we peruse the dictionary further, especially if we approach that
monument to English scholarship, the great Murray, we shall find that
the problem of defining humor is not so simple as it might seem; for the
word that we use so glibly, with so sure a confidence in its stability,
has had a long and varied history and has answered to many aliases. When
Shakespeare called a man "humorous" he meant that he was changeable and
capricious, not that he was given to a facetious turn of thought or to a
"sportive" exercise of the imagination. When he talks in "The Taming of
the Shrew" of "her mad and head-strong humor" he doesn't mean to imply
that Kate is a practical joker. It is interesting to note in passing
that the old meaning of the word still lingers in the verb "to humor." A
woman still humors her spoiled child and her cantankerous husband when
she yields to their capriciousness. By going hack a step further in
history, to the late fourteenth century, we met Chaucer's physician who
knew "the cause of everye maladye, and where engendered and of what
humour" and find that Chaucer is not speaking of a mental state at all,
but is referring to those physiological humours of which, according to
Hippocrates, the human body contained four: blood, phlegm, bile, and
black bile, and by which the disposition was determined. We find, too,
that at one time a "humour" meant any animal or plant fluid, and again
any kind of moisture. "The skie hangs full of humo