Wit and/or Humor

Abstract

The article analyzes interconnection of the main English terms wit and humour, and proves their untranslatability into French language. Indeed, their traditional French analogues, esprit and humour, do not have similar set of connotations. Thus, the English wit, as used by Hobbes and Locke, denotes some synthetic ability of mind to remark similarity in different things, i.e. fundamentally different from judgment, as, first of all, analytical difference in ideas. Just like the German Witz it denotes knowledge, but a creative and individual one, initiated by the developed abilities, inventiveness etc.; thus, wit is mostly close to ingenium as that of Cicerō and humanists. But these peculiarities of wit inevitably associate it with pleasure which an individual feels if having realized his/her exceptional intellectual faculties, ingenious discussion, play on words (pun), drollery (joke). As for its effect, i.e. pleasure, wit assimilates with good humour. English humour simultaneously embraces the meaning of general temper of mind, “state of heart” a such, “joyful frame of mind” as well as raillery, irony, ridicule and “humour-joke”, and therefore, following the opinion of the author of the paper, may not be adequately reproduced by one and the same French analogue, since the first and the second meaning are more appropriately translated into French by humeur, and the third – by loan translation le humour.