Boff, cooch and jiggly: The funniest words in the English language

Take note next time you want to crack a few jokes at a dinner party

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The funniest words in the dictionary have been revealed, with 'upchuck', 'boff' and 'jiggly' topping the list.

Constantly changing, updating and evolving, the English language is a fascinating entity that’s seen words such as 'avo' and 'bougie' weave their way into everyday vocabulary lately.

The ability of certain words to positively affect your mood is a curious topic, so thought-provoking that researchers from the University of Alberta decided to explore it in great detail.

According to their study, which was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, there are some words that are far more likely to have you in fits of laughter than others.

“Humour is, of course, still personal,” says Chris Westbury, a psychology professor at the university.

“Here, we get at the elements of humour that aren’t personal; things that are universally funny.”

Westbury and his co-author, Geoff Hollis, had participants rate the comedic value of 4,997 words from the English language.

This allowed them to determine which words were deemed as being funnier than others, whether that be due to a word being particularly unusual or simply sounding funny when said out loud.

After bottling it down to 10 words, Westbury and Hollis concluded that the funniest words in the English language are: 'upchuck', 'bubby', 'boff', 'wriggly', 'yaps', 'giggle', 'cooch', 'guffaw', 'puffball' and 'jiggly'.

"We demonstrate that words are judged funnier if they are less common and have an improbably orthographic or phonological structure," they state in the study.

"We also describe and quantify the semantic attributes of words that are judged funny and show that they are partly compatible with the superiority theory of humour, which focuses on humour as scorn."

So, next time you're with some friends and telling an entertaining anecdote, why not try throwing a few 'guffaws' or 'puffballs' into the conversation?

Who knows - perhaps you'll reinvent yourself as a comedy genius.