Dry Wit

October 19, 2004, 14:53

Caterwauller

Dry Wit

I asked this in another thread, and still want answers!!!

How did we come to consider wry wit to be dry wit? Interesting, don't you think? Does that mean that there is wet humor? Moist humor? Sort of a humidification scale of humor?

October 19, 2004, 15:06

Kalleh

Good question, CW!

I went to Google, the Word Detective and World Wide Words and couldn't find anything about how it developed. I did find a few forums, like ours, that discussed a dry sense of humor. One of them gave this joke as an example of it:
A man went camping in Northern Arizona, as he had many times before. But he noticed something different this time when he began fishing. There were no bites on his line at all. He headed over to the local market to get some new bait, and the shopkeeper gave him some advice.

"Don't even bother buying any bait," said the shopkeeper

"Why's that?" questioned the man.

"There ain't no fish 'round here no more. We had a freak flood come through and wipe them all out."

"But how would a flood wipe out the fish?" wondered the man.

"There ain't never been no water 'round Arizona, so the fish never learned to swim."

Is that dry?

October 19, 2004, 17:10

Caterwauller

Ha!!!!!!!!

October 19, 2004, 22:17

Richard English

Of course, they've never had any beer in Arizona either - thay have to drink Budweiser.

(That's an example, to my mind, of dry humour)

October 20, 2004, 04:36

Caterwauller

Well, I don't really need examples of dry humor. I generally get it! What I'm wondering is . . . what is the opposite? Would we call it wet humor?

October 20, 2004, 08:29

Robert Arvanitis

I assure this august body, that my own ethnic heritage in no way influences my preference for the clearer, and historically more accurate term, "Attic wit."

October 20, 2004, 18:22

Kalleh

Well, this link is probably more than anyone wanted to know about wet and dry (can you imagine writing a dissertation on those words?)...but the writer did say that, while dry is the opposite of wet for most of wet's uses, the opposite is not true; that is, there is no wet humor.

Now, I did find wet humor listed in google, but that surely doesn't mean it exists!

What do you think? Should we invite this Vicky to our forum?

October 20, 2004, 18:43

Robert Arvanitis

Wait, kalleh.

Isn't a failed joke sometimes called a "damp squib?"

October 20, 2004, 18:50

Robert Arvanitis

Also on the topic of wet/dry, an interesting contrast between American and Japanese culture and perceptions.

The US stereotype of Japan is unemotional, detached, stoic.

In contrast, though they mask it, the Japanese consider themselves "wet" or emotionally responsive, in contrast to the "dry" unfeeling Americans.

See: http://fly.hiwaay.net/~eueda/japguest.htm

October 20, 2004, 18:53

Robert Arvanitis

And from

http://www.gregoryclark.net/books/pages/nihbook2.htm

we get:

"The more I puzzled over the Japanese personality the more I came back to the concept of the Japanese as a fundamentally emotional people. Emotional is a word many would not use about Japan. They would see the Japanese as artificial and robot-like, with emotions inhibited. If anything they would use the word unemotional.

"But emotional has the deeper meaning of acting on the basis of feelings and instinct. We see it in Japan in the constant appeals to the heart, in the emphasis on human relations, in the dislike of dry, reasoned argument. In Japan it is a virtue to be uetto (wet) rather than dorai (dry). Jocho -refined emotionality - is the ultimate in 'wet' virtues. Even intellectuals boast of the non-intellectuality, of how the Japanese prefer intuition and feeling to logic and reason."

October 21, 2004, 11:32

Kalleh

Isn't a failed joke sometimes called a "damp squib?"

Hmm, it is a good thing you didn't attend her dissertation defense!

I haven't heard the phrase.

Robert, those links to Japan were excellent. I especially enjoyed reading about how hard it is for them to learn English.

October 21, 2004, 17:27

tinman

I looked up "damp squib" in OneLook, but didn't expect to find anything. To my surprise, it was listed in four dictionaries!

Tinman

October 21, 2004, 20:32

<Asa Lovejoy>

quote:

Now, I did find _wet_ humor listed in google, but that surely doesn't mean it exists!

Welll, have you ever known a comedian to leave a wet spot?

October 21, 2004, 20:37

Caterwauller

quote:
Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
Welll, have you ever known a comedian to leave a wet spot?

Only the really sexy ones . . . oh, wait - what kind of wet spot did you mean?

March 12, 2005, 02:49

Doad

quote:
Welll, have you ever known a comedian to leave a wet spot?
Only the really sexy ones . . . oh, wait - what kind of wet spot did you mean?

Now now CW, don't get carried away!

March 12, 2005, 03:02

Doad

I have been unable to discover for sure why it is called dry humour but it is certainly an old expression. In 1542 it could be defined as 'a jest or sarcasm uttered in a matter-of-fact tone'. Clearly it is recognised as a particular type of humour and was heavily associated with irony at the time. The nearest link I can find to explain its possible use to describe a style of humour is from 1626 when it had the definition 'lacking embellishment; bare; matter-of-fact'. There certainly seems to be an association there.

The best thing about a thread on humour as far as I'm concerned is that it gives me the perfect excuse to wind CW up with the number of extraneous U's I can use. Must be my sense of HUMOUR!

March 12, 2005, 03:27

BobHale

I think it's all tied in with this thread. I'll find more detail later.

March 12, 2005, 06:38

Doad

Thanks for that link Bob, I found it very interesting. As you say, they do appeared to be strongly linked and I was torn between which thread to post on before deciding that the one you directed me to was more appropriate. I never realised that being a member here would be so confusing as there is such a crossover between threads. Good fun though and very educational.

March 12, 2005, 12:14

Caterwauller

quote:
Good fun though and very educational.

Isn't that redundant?

March 12, 2005, 14:34

Kalleh

From all the discussion of dry humo(u)r (I do think Americans need to put the u in dry humour because it is so British!) I think the very best definition comes from Doad's 1542 definition, "a jest or sarcasm uttered in a matter-of-fact tone." To think that in almost 500 years dry humour means just about the same is amazing.

But, then, I guess language is just amazing!

March 13, 2005, 04:06

Richard English

Of course, in England we make allowances for the Americans' inability to understand quite ordinary jokes. And we don't mind that they can't spell or puntuate properly either.

March 13, 2005, 04:11

Caterwauller

HA!

How very kind and accommodating, Richard.

March 13, 2005, 06:56

jheem

Of course, in England we make allowances for the Americans' inability to understand quite ordinary jokes. And we don't mind that they can't spell or puntuate properly either.

Quelle drôle d'idée!

March 13, 2005, 07:08

<Asa Lovejoy>

quote:
Originally posted by Richard English:
Of course, in England we make allowances for the Americans' inability to understand quite ordinary jokes.

[i]Nosce teipsum.[i]

March 13, 2005, 07:09

<Asa Lovejoy>

quote:
Originally posted by Richard English:
Of course, in England we make allowances for the Americans' inability to understand quite ordinary jokes.

Nosce teipsum.

March 13, 2005, 07:18

jheem

Nosce teipsum.

Not to be a nitpicker, but it's nosce te ipsum (or Γνωθι σεαυτον in the original Greek). The words for thyself are separate in Latin, but can be a single word in Greek.

March 13, 2005, 09:04

<Asa Lovejoy>

quote:

Not to be a nitpicker, but it's nosce te ipsum

Curses! My attempt at dry wit unwittingly foiled by my not having opened a Latin grammar in forty-three years!

Asa, tail between legs, returning to his hovel

March 14, 2005, 04:03

Caterwauller

. . . but what does it mean?

March 14, 2005, 05:42

<Asa Lovejoy>

Know thyself. Made famous in Pope's Essay on Man. "Know then thyself, presume not god to scan/The proper study of mankind is man"

March 14, 2005, 15:22

Caterwauller

Oh - thanks.

March 14, 2005, 15:42

wordnerd

quote:
Originally posted by Richard English:
Of course, in England we make allowances for the Americans' inability to understand quite ordinary jokes. And we don't mind that they can't spell or puntuate properly either.

We can't 'spell or puntuate', you say?

Res ipsa loquitur

March 14, 2005, 15:48

jheem

Know thyself.

Socrates hisself was supposed to have admonished thus. Others attribute it to the Oracle at Delphi.

puntuate

You gotta puntuate the positive.
Avatar the negative.
Insalata mista in between.

March 14, 2005, 16:13

Hic et ubique

Ya gots t'have read Joyce
. . . . . . .up to the maximum
Bring Hume
. . . . . . .down to the minimum
Stoppard with pandemonium
Liable to talk up on a scene.

(compare here)

March 14, 2005, 16:49

jheem

Tom Stoppard is one of the better Czech authors writing in English. Totally different life story, though, than Joseph Conrad, one of the best Polish authors doing the same.

March 14, 2005, 17:12

Robert Arvanitis

Full marks to Stoppard, since his Broca's region was first fixed on Czech. But he got to England by age 9...

March 14, 2005, 17:27

jheem

But he got to England by age 9

Via Singapore and Darjeeling. Conrad however was an ancient mariner by the time he got to Old Blighty.

July 26, 2008, 15:08

icnoyotl

quote:
Originally posted by Kalleh:
Well, this link is probably more than anyone wanted to know about wet and dry (can you imagine writing a dissertation on those words?)...but the writer did say that, while dry is the opposite of wet for most of wet's uses, the opposite is not true; that is, there is no wet humor.

Now, I did find wet humor listed in google, but that surely doesn't mean it exists!

What do you think? Should we invite this Vicky to our forum?

Wet humour is when you push somebody into a swimming pool.

July 26, 2008, 16:02

<Proofreader>

Wet humor is Gallagher.

July 26, 2008, 16:21

<Asa Lovejoy>

Ah, a long-dead thread dug up.

Since the four humours are at least damp in a literal sense, dry humour must therefore be devoid of the water of life. We in the US seem to think that way, since a joke that is subtle often seems lifeless to us. I may be grasping for something that isn't there, but there's a certain logic to it, I think.

Dessicated Asa