[f. FUN sb. + -Y1.]
1. Affording fun, mirth-producing, comical, facetious.
1756. W. Toldervy, Hist. Two Orphans, II. 151. Tom Heartley and Richmond said a great many funny things.
1762. Foote, Orators, I. i. Is it damn’d funny and comical?
1787. Burns, Halloween, xxviii. Unco tales, an’ funnie jokes.
1827. De Quincey, Murder, Wks. 1862, IV. 22. He became very sociable and funny.
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, xiii. Popping in his little funny head.
absol. 1820. Praed, Eve of Battle, 297. A mixture of the grave and funny.
2. Curious, queer, odd, strange, colloq.
1806. Metcalfe, in Owen, Wellesley’s Desp., 809. This study to decrease our influence is funny. I cannot understand it.
1838. G. P. R. James, The Robber, i. That was a funny slip of mine!
1852. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xix. ‘What funny things you are making’ … ‘I’m trying to write to my poor old woman.’
1855. Ld. Houghton, in Life (1891), I. xi. 527. Lady Ellesmere was very funny about Mrs. Gaskell, wanting very much to see her, and yet quite shy about it, so I settled the matter by making her ask them to lunch.
1889. N. W. Linc. Gloss. (ed. 2), s.v., ‘To keap fun’rals waaitin’ time efter time is a straange funny waay for a parson to go on.’
† 3. slang. Tipsy. Obs.
1756. W. Toldervy, Hist. Two Orphans, I. 62 More brandy was drank, and, Tom Throw beginning to be what is called funny, the house was full of uproar and confusion.
4. Comb., as funny-looking adj.; funny-bone, the popular name for that part of the elbow over which the ulnar nerve passes, from the peculiar sensation experienced when it is struck; funnyman, a professional jester.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Bloudie Jacke. And they smack, and they thwack, Till your *‘funny bones’ crack.
1867. Pall Mall G., 30 Jan., 4. It is like rapping a man … over the funny-bone.
1881. Blackmore, Christowell, xv. Even the fiddlers three, and the piper, worthy to perform before King Cole, took a softer stroke of melody, and worked their funny-bones more gently.
1895. M. E. Francis, Frieze & Fustian, 283. ‘Yon’s a *funny-lookin’ lass. Let’s chase her!’
1861. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, III. 119. What I’ve earn’d as clown, or the *funnyman, with a party of acrobats.
Hence Funnily adv., in a funny manner; Funniness, the quality or state of being funny; a funny saying or joke. Also Funnyism nonce-wd., a joke.
1814. Lady Granville, Lett., 18 Nov. (1894), I. 51. Freddy is extremely galant about Susan, says she is such a nice girl, and talks so funnily and sweetly.
1839. Caroline Fox, Mem. Old Friends (1882), 37. His stories and funnyisms of all descriptions.
1856. Ld. Cockburn, Mem. (1856), 317, note. Respectable characters were wilfully and systematically slandered, but that it was funnily done; which was not always the case, for it was often with bitter gravity.
1857. Gen. P. Thompson, Audi Alteram Partem, I. xi. 37. I did hear one or two members near me, who do not pass for Solons, make a kind of school-boy titter at the funniness of a man’s not being seconded.
1865. Daily Tel., 8 Dec., 4/6. Marching … to the sound of their own … irrepressible funninesses.
1882. J. Brown, Horæ Subs., Ser. III. 35. A man … whose absolute levity and funniness became ponderous.
