Talk:funny

While fey is more mystical or other worldly, it may be said that someone who acts "funny" does so because they are fey.rob chamberlin 07:02, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

adverb?

I've heard it used in sentences a lot like so: That man talks funny. - is this grammatically incorrect it is this an adverb too? -- 203.171.192.13 00:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Boat

I'm speculating here, but the fact that "funny" sounds like "fune", the Japanese word for boat, leads me to wonder if the boat sense is somehow derived from Japanese. -- 174.31.254.8 23:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Does this even exist? I can't find anything. Maybe the signal just so completely buried under the noise of the much more common meaning of funny, but I can't find anything with the usual tricks of specifically searching for "rowing in a funny", "in a funny boat" etc. The few cites that even hint at this meaning are from the mid-1800s, so I wouldnt expect it to be from Japanese, but it also isnt clear that it means a rowboat or even a boat (e.g. even if a sentence contains the string "rowing in a funny", it could be an article of clothing). I'll look into this but I expect I'll probably be bringing it to RFV soon. —Soap— 11:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

RFV discussion: September 2018

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funny

Please verify that the "comic strip" sense is used in the singular, I've only seen it as "the funnies" of a newspaper. Helenpaws (talk) 17:00, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Now that is very difficult to search for. I did manage to find one cite. Is that enough? Kiwima (talk) 21:09, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

OK, I have found another, although it refers to an animated cartoon rather than a comic strip. Kiwima (talk) 21:23, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. https://www.gainesvilletimes.com/columnists/johnny-vardemans-column/drawn-into-history-gainesville-cartoonist-to-continue-legacy-of-mark-trail-comic/ Helenpaws (talk) 21:28, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

So I'm good anyway, feel free to wrap this up. Helenpaws (talk) 21:39, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 01:16, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Missing sense?

I'm not sure usages like "Funny, you don't look Jewish" (I don't know why that's the phrase that came to mind!) and "It's funny: now that I can afford to travel, I don't want to" are covered by any of the existing definitions. The meaning of "funny" in the first statement is perhaps closer to "Strange or unusual, often implying unpleasant" than "Amusing; humorous; comical", and the other way 'round for the second statement — but it seems to me that these two uses of "funny" are closer in meaning to each other than to either of the quoted defintions. Perhaps another definition closer to "interesting" is called for? - dcljr (talk) 22:02, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

The Jamaican meaning

There is another song we could use to prove ‘funny’ can be used to mean ‘homosexual’, namely ‘nah accept it’ by Bugle. I can’t quite make out the surrounding lyrics though. It can be found at this YouTube link[1]. Overlordnat1 (talk) 04:21, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

RFV discussion: July–August 2023

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funny (boat)

Requesting verification of both senses of funny#Etymology_2, which I have just moved together. The sculling boat sense has been here since 2005, indeed since the third diff of the page. I suspect the other boat sense is talking about the same thing.

I've found some evidence that this is real, such as these links: [2] [3] [4] and a blog post I cant find right now (I was on a different computer). However, while two and perhaps all three of these sources could be considered durably archived, none of them gives the specific narrow definition we list; all we know is that a funny is some type of boat. This British rowing glossary doesnt list it. Its worth noting that the three sources I found are all quite old (1775, 1834, 1841), but the blog post I looked at earlier was referring to a current usage and not a historical one. Can anyone turn up more information? Thanks, —Soap— 21:58, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Just to note that the sculling boat sense (1) is given in the OED with a large number of citations. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:04, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Cited. This is at least dated—although the term is used in recent books it's always now either in an older context or in long lists of vessels (as in the last cite). In any case it's used and defined consistently, and the second sense here is a restatement of the first (Christopher Dodd, The Story of World Rowing (1992), states that a funny is a "clinker outrigger single-person double-ender"). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:38, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Should we delete the second sense? I agree it may be just another way to describe the same thing, as it would be unexpected for there to be two different kinds of boat with the same name, and the second definition is unclear. All boats have their ends out of the water, so perhaps they mean that even the bottom is above the surface of the water at either end, but that seems like an impractical design. (But I clearly dont know much about boats, so I might be wrong about that.) —Soap— 13:35, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

I meant to add that what is now the second boat sense was originally in a separate etymology section, and may have been added by someone who didn't read the whole page. —Soap— 13:41, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

It should be removed as redundant yeah. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:51, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

RFV-resolved, merged the senses. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:15, 24 August 2023 (UTC)