Humor or humour?
In American English write humor; in British and Commonwealth English, humour. humor is a noun meaning “US spelling of humour”; humour is a noun meaning “The quality of being amusing, comical, funny”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) humor is about 2.3 times as common as humour.
What is the difference between humor and humour?
| humor | humour | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | noun, verb |
| Meaning | USUS spelling of humour | UKThe quality of being amusing, comical, funny UKA mood, especially a bad mood; a temporary state of mind or disposition brought upon by an event; an abrupt illogical inclination or whim UKTo pacify by indulging |
| Example | He was in a particularly vile humor that afternoon | She has a great sense of humour, and I always laugh a lot whenever we get together |
| Forms | humors | humours |
| Pronunciation | /hjuː.mə(ɹ)/ /ˈhjuːmɚ/ /ˈjuːmɚ/ | /ˈhjuː.mə(ɹ)/ /ˈhjuːmɚ/ /ˈjuːmɚ/ |
| Region | US | UK |
| In writing | 15 times per million words | 6.8 times per million words |
Sources: humor and humour in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of humor and humour
humor
- 1
USUS spelling of humour
He was in a particularly vile humor that afternoon
- 2
USUS spelling of humour
I know you don't believe my story, but humor me for a minute and imagine it to be true
humour
- 1
UKThe quality of being amusing, comical, funny
She has a great sense of humour, and I always laugh a lot whenever we get together
- 2
UKTo pacify by indulging
I know you don't believe my story, but humour me for a minute and imagine it to be true
- 3
UKA mood, especially a bad mood; a temporary state of mind or disposition brought upon by an event; an abrupt illogical inclination or whim
He was in a particularly vile humour that afternoon
- 4
UKEither of the two regions of liquid within the eyeball, the aqueous humour and vitreous humour
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, humor or humour?
humor appears 15 times per million words; humour 6.8 times per million words.
humor 15 times per million wordshumour 6.8 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search humor vs humour?
“humor vs humour” is searched about 480 times a month on Google and 30 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“humour vs humor”, “humor or humour”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.