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fun·ny (fŭnē)
Share:
adj. fun·ni·er, fun·ni·est
1.
a. Causing laughter or amusement: a funny cartoon.
b. Making or given to making amusing jokes or witticisms: a colleague who is very funny.
c. Appropriate as the subject of a joke; deserving of a joke. Used in negative sentences to express disapproval or to emphasize the seriousness of something: There is nothing funny about getting the flu.
2.
a. Difficult to account for; unusual or odd: I had a funny feeling that she would call.
b. Suspiciously odd: It's funny how I seem to lose something every time he comes around.
3. Counterfeit or fraudulent: tried to pass off funny money as legitimate.
4. Informal Somewhat ill, painful, or abnormal: I felt funny after eating those clams. "a mole on his arm that has started to go funny" (Ann Cummins).
5. Informal
a. Offensively forward or disrespectful: She told him off after he started to get funny.
b. Contrary to one's demands or expectations: Don't let the prisoners do anything funny.
n. pl. fun·nies
Informal
1. A joke; a witticism: "He laughed because he did not know I was not making a funny" (Jonathan Safran Foer).
2. funnies
a. Comic strips.
b. The section of a newspaper containing comic strips.

[From FUN.]

funni·ly adv.
funni·ness n.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.