Men Vs. Women: What Funny Words Does Each Sex Like Most?

If you think you hear snickers every time you say the word “booty” or “hooter” or “ass,” you’re not just imagining it — most people might really consider them three of the funniest words in the English language. Body parts and sexual terms were big hits in a study into the most humorous words, particularly among the male subjects.

While men laughed the most at “bondage,” “birthmark” and “orgy,” according to a study in the journal Behavior Research Methods, women had the best time with “giggle,” “beast” and “circus.” Results also varied across age ranges and educational backgrounds, allowing the researchers to rank words by how much they tickled individual groups as well as the overall population.

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Psychologists asked online users to rate words that had been randomly selected out of a pool of 5,000 in terms of how funny they were, on a scale from one to five. “Booty” took the overall prize, leading off their list, followed by “tit,” “booby,” “hooter” and “nitwit” to round out the top five. “Ass” ranked 10th overall, right after “twit,” “waddle,” “tinkle,” “bebop” and “egghead.”

The study also found out what words people found least funny, and most of those were associated with violence. The words rated on the most extremely unfunny side of the scale were “rape,” “torture,” “torment,” “gunshot,” and “death.” Other words found to be most serious included “war” and “rapist,” as well as the more vague “distrust” and “pain.”

“The research initially came about as a result of our curiosity,” lead study author Tomas Engelthaler said in a statement from the University of Warwick. “We were wondering if certain words are perceived as funnier, even when read on their own. It turns out that indeed is the case.”

Although the results showed that men and women tended to find different words funny, with men leaning toward sexual or anatomical words and women pointing to more words that could be described as light or silly, there was common ground. Both sexes seemed to agree that “scrotum” and “buttocks” were humorous, as well as the less sexual words “yank,” “prance” and “jabber,” among some others.

Each of the more than 800 people participating in the study rated upward of 200 words, leaving plenty of room for overlap in words they were rating.

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In their study the psychologists said that they hope the data on humorous words will provide some more understanding of the human brain: “The appreciation of humor is a fundamental, albeit mysterious, part of human cognition,” they wrote.

The researchers also note that knowing more about how humor works and what people find funny on a scientific level could help programmers who strive to design joke-making algorithms that will serve machines.

“Humor is an everyday aspects of our lives and we hope this publicly available dataset allows future researchers to better understand its foundations,” Engelthaler said.