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#40810 09/05/2001 1:46 PM
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Why is it that we think of a "sense of humor" (or humour, if you're outside the US) as the sanguine one, and not the bilious ones or phlegmatic one? Am I the only one who responds to someone's saying that so-and-so has a good sense of humor by asking which one?

Bilious Geoff


#40811 09/05/2001 4:57 PM
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Yes.



TEd
#40812 09/05/2001 5:29 PM
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But not for long </board/images/icons/evilgrin.gif>


#40813 09/05/2001 5:46 PM
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Dear Geoff: I have always enjoyed your bits of humour, but never detected any bile in them.


#40814 09/05/2001 6:15 PM
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so a sanguine sense of humor-- is that cheerfull? or blood thirsty? sanguine is one of those words i hate, since its meaning is so dependent on tone.. and i have enough to do, just getting the words to work..

can you have a good sense of bilious humor, if to be bilious is to be peevish, and ill natured? or does a good sense of bilious humor mean you've perfected being ill natured?

Are you? you hide it well.


#40815 09/05/2001 8:51 PM
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or does a good
sense of bilious humor mean you've perfected being ill natured?


Examples: H. L. Mencken and Mike Royko.


#40816 09/05/2001 8:58 PM
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And if someone tickled your upper arm...would that be humerus? (beat you on that one, Dr. Bill...saved ya from a groaner!)


#40817 09/06/2001 12:55 AM
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I assume you meant that in a jugular vein. If you didn't aorta be a law against that sort of pun.



TEd
#40818 09/06/2001 12:57 AM
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Ted quoth,Yes

Damn, Ted, now I've gotta go change my diapers! ROFLMAO! But then, a very successful businessman/philanthropist once said to me, "Isn't it better to be one in a million than one of a million?" He was a native Hungarian speaker, but he surely did understand English!


#40819 09/06/2001 2:42 AM
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No, I won't bone up to my intentions here. And while I found your response to be a rather jocular jugular, Ted, I think we're treading a marrow path on the line between bloody funny and the road to the Old Punsters Home. But, somehow, I think we'll be pulsing with puns for awhile, yet, despite all groaning arteries.


#40820 09/06/2001 12:01 PM
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Come to think of it sense of humor would mean that one had an understanding of the levels of all the humors in one's body. Certainly one needs to know where one's phlegm and black and yellow bile levels are as well as one's blood level to appreciate whether something is funny or not.


#40821 09/06/2001 12:34 PM
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Come to think of it sense of humor would mean that one had an understanding of the levels of all the humors
in one's body.
--------------------------
--------------------------

Exactly! That's what I was driving at in the first place! Few people have any idea what they're saying when they claim to have a "sense of humor." And it was nice of Anu to use "phlegmatic" as today's word, seemingly humoring us with this thread.


#40822 09/06/2001 12:39 PM
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Come to think of it sense of humor would mean that one had an understanding of the levels of all the humors
in one's body.
--------------------------
--------------------------

Exactly! That's what I was driving at in the first place! Few people have any idea what they're saying when they claim to have a "sense of humor." And it was nice of Anu to use "phlegmatic" as today's word, seemingly humoring us with this thread.

Now, if we use "bilious" for black bile, do we use "Jaundiced" for yellow bile? My dictionaries aren't clear on this.



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