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written by Sam Greenspan

A new study analyzed 5,000 words to find the funniest and least funny. And booty booty booty booty is rockin’ everywhere.

I’ve spent the past 14 years working as a comedy writer and, in that time, I can’t even begin to tabulate how much time I’ve spent trying to pick the *perfect* words for maximum humor impact.

Turns out I should’ve just channeled Bubba Sparxx or the Ying Yang Twins and called it a day.

Two psychologists from the University of Warwick in the U.K. recently published the results of their study (summary here; full dataset here), which attempted to quantify humor. They had test subjects all over the world rank the humorousness of 4,997 different words and, ultimately, found the universally funniest and least funny words in the English language.

Maybe.

Here are their results for the 11 funniest words in the world…

1 | Booty

2 | Tit

“Titty” wasn’t included, which is weird, because (I’d think) it’s a much funnier version of the word.

3 | Hooter

4 | Booby

I’m seeing a pattern emerge.

5 | Nitwit

6 | Waddle

7 | Twit

This is one of those words that makes British people lose their minds while everyone else looks on confused.

8 | Tinkle

9 | Twerp

10 | Egghead

11 | (tie) Floozy and Oomph

Words that just missed the cut: Bebop… pecker… ass… buffoon… cahoots… oink… crotch… and douche.

Here are how some other notably funny words finished:

37 | Cuckoo

Krusty the Clown would be devastated that this is the highest “comedy k”-heavy word on the list.

76 | Joke

If there are any bits of insight into human nature to glean from the list, I’d say they are: (1) people love slang term for body parts (2) we all hold ourselves to a high enough standard that someone simply saying “joke” isn’t enough to make us ready to laugh.

145 | Fatty

Performed MUCH better than fat (3405th place).

179 | Muff

How did the best of the body part slang terms perform this poorly?

183 | Trump

The lowercase version “trump,” but still.

206 | Seaman

Wrong. (By the way, “semen” was 564th.)

536 | Breast

It’s safe to say that slang terms for “breast” got much better reactions.

1938 | Bondage

This word had the largest male-slanted gender divide: Men think it’s funny, women REALLY don’t.

2497 | Wiring

The innocuous, indifference-inspiring midpoint of the study. Half of words are funnier, half are less funny.

4977 | N*****

There were 20 words that ranked less funny. Hopefully because of famous Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle comedy bits around the word and not, you know, the 2017 of it all.

4997 | Rape

The least funny word in the entire study.

I really should’ve structured this post differently so it ended on the funny words, not the super depressing ones.

Anyway, I’m off to twittle my muff. (Am I doing this right?)