Difference Between Witty and Funny

The key difference between witty and funny is that witty only involves verbal humor whereas funny does not only involve verbal humor.

Witty refers to showing quick and inventive verbal humor whereas funny refers to causing laughter or amusement. Another important difference between witty and funny is that witty remarks may not always cause laughter or amusement while funny people’s comments or situations do.

CONTENTS

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What Does Witty Mean
3. What Does Funny Mean
4. Side by Side Comparison – Witty vs Funny in Tabular Form
5. Summary

What Does Witty Mean?

Witty refers to the quality of possessing or showing wit – the ability to say things that clever and funny. In other words, it refers to showing or quick and inventive verbal humour. Moreover, wit is considered to be an intelligent form of humour. A wit or a witty person is a person who is able to make funny and clever remarks. Furthermore, being witty involves a certain mental sharpness. A witty person is able to see a situation in a unique way and is instinctively able to respond with a comment or comeback that suits the particular situation.

Moreover, there are various forms of wit including quip, wisecrack, and repartee. However, witty remarks or comebacks may not always be funny and may not induce laughter; but they are always clever and arouse amusement.

Given below are two witty comebacks that are attributed to Winston Churchill,

Example 1:

A lady: “You, sir, are drunk.”
Churchill: “You, madam, are ugly, and in the morning I shall be sober.”

What Does Funny Man?

Funny is another name for humorous. Something or someone funny cause laughter and amusement. Thus, we use the adjective funny to refer to things, people or comments that amuse us and make us laugh. In other words, funny things or people cause humour.

Furthermore, there are different forms of humour including types that involves simple farces or slapstick humour as well as sophisticated satire or sarcasm. Sophisticated and intelligent forms of humour involve factors like sarcasm, timing, wit and cleverness. However, simple humour only involves few physical movements. For example, a Charlie Chaplin movie has no witty or sarcastic dialogues; it mainly relies on slapstick – a comedy based on intentionally clumsy actions and humorously embarrassing events. Anyone can understand this type of humour.

It is important to note that the adjective funny always refer to things that cause laughter or amusement. Nevertheless, funny does not always imply witty as even slapstick comedies can cause laughter.

What is the Difference Between Witty and Funny

First of all, witty means showing quick and inventive verbal humour whereas funny means causing laughter or amusement. That is; while wit is a verbal form of humour, funny refers to both verbal and physical humour such as slapstick or farce. So, this is the key difference between witty and funny. Moreover, another difference between witty and funny is that the witty remarks may not always cause laughter or amusement while funny people’s comments or situations do. Furthermore, a major difference between witty and funny is that wit always displays intelligence whereas funny remarks or things do not necessarily display intelligence.

Summary – Witty vs Funny

The key difference between witty and funny is that witty only involves verbal humor whereas funny does not only involve verbal humor. While wit always displays intelligence, funny remarks or things do not necessarily display intelligence.

Image Courtesy:

1.”The feast of reason, and the flow of soul,’ – ie – the wits of the age, setting the table in a roar by James Gillray”By User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London (Public Domain) via Commons Wikimedia  
2.”Chaplin, Charlie (His New Job) 03″By Employee(s) of Essanay (Public Domain) via Commons Wikimedia