SHARP DIFFERENCE: WIT AND HUMOUR NICELY DEFINED

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 76, 2 August 1948, Page 2

SHARP DIFFERENCE: WIT AND HUMOUR NICELY DEFINED

“Humour belongs to the imagination and wit to the intellect,’ said Dr Basil Howard, liaison officer at Otago University, in an address entitled “Wit and Humour,” given to the Southland University Association. Dr Howard traced the origins of wit and humour and explained the forms in which they are found at the present dime. “I defy anyone to tell me that wit and humour are the same thing,” said Dr Howard. “Of course there is a no man’s land type of humour which falls between the two, but apart from this there are sharp differences.” “If one could write a history of humour, it would be a history which would also trace the development of man,” he said. “The basis of humour is the satisfaction we feel at the discomfiture of a fellow man.” The Stone Age man had probably found the death or discomfiture of one of his fellows to be highly amusing. Since then, this type of humour had become submerged, but it was still found among the lower type of mentality in the present day. “Stone Age humour is still with us today in the shape of the guffaw,” said Dr Howard. “What still makes young people laugh is. the banana-skin type of humour, but it should not do so when it is considered what we have spent on education. “Humour may be thought without words, but wit must be expressed. Some humour is too deep for words, but wit .must take a definite form,” concluded Dr Howard.