Fun
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Illustration: Mona Lisa Smoking a Pipe by Eugène Bataille
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Fun is the enjoyment of pleasure, particularly in leisure activities. Fun is an experience - short-term, often unexpected, informal, not cerebral and generally purposeless. It is an enjoyable distraction, diverting the mind and body from any serious task or contributing an extra dimension to it. Although particularly associated with recreation and play, fun may be encountered during work, social functions, and even seemingly mundane activities of daily living. It may often have little to no logical basis, and opinions on whether or not an activity is fun may differ. The distinction between enjoyment and fun is difficult to articulate but real, fun being a more spontaneous, playful, or active event. There are psychological and physiological implications to the experience of fun.
Its adjective funny has two meanings, staying close to the meaning of fun there is amusing, humorous and comical; but straying from its meaning there is strange and unusual.
Contents |
See also
Etymology
From Middle English fon, fonne (“foolish, simple, silly”), probably of North Germanic origin, related to Swedish fånig (“foolish”), Swedish fåne (“a fool”). Compare also Norwegian fomme, fume (“a fool”). More at fon. Alternative etymology connects Middle English fonne to Old Frisian fonna, fone, fomne, variant forms of Old Frisian fāmne, fēmne (“young woman, virgin”), from Proto-Germanic *faimnijǭ (“maiden”), from Proto-Indo-European *peymen- (“girl”), *poymen- (“breast milk”). If so, then cognate with Old English fǣmne (“maid, virgin, damsel, bride”), West Frisian famke (“girl”), Eastern Frisian fone, fon (“woman, maid, servant," also "weakling, simpleton”).
Namesakes
- Funny Games, a film by Haneke
See also
