Wit is a form of intelligent
humour
Humour ( Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in ...
, the ability to say or write things that are clever and usually funny.
Someone witty is a person who is skilled at making clever and funny remarks.
Forms of wit include the quip, repartee, and wisecrack.
Forms
As in the wit of
Dorothy Parker's set, the
Algonquin Round Table, witty remarks may be intentionally cruel (as in many
epigrams), and perhaps more
ingenious than funny.
A quip is an observation or saying that has some wit but perhaps descends into
sarcasm
Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...
, or otherwise is short of a point, and a witticism also suggests the diminutive.
Repartee is the wit of the quick answer and capping comment: the snappy comeback and neat retort. (
Wilde
Wilde is a surname. Notable people with the name include:
In arts and entertainment In film, television, and theatre
* '' Wilde'' a 1997 biographical film about Oscar Wilde
* Andrew Wilde (actor), English actor
* Barbie Wilde (born 1960), Canad ...
: "I wish I'd said that."
Whistler: "You will, Oscar, you will.")
[ Monty Python: Oscar Wilde sketch]
Metaphysical poetry as a style was prevalent in the time of English playwright
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
, who admonished pretension with the phrase "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit".
It may combine
word play
Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a literary technique and a form of wit in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Examples of word play include puns, pho ...
with conceptual thinking, as a kind of verbal display requiring attention, without intending to be laugh-out-loud funny; in fact wit can be a thin disguise for more poignant feelings that are being versified. English poet
John Donne is the representative of this style.
More generally, one's wits are one's intellectual powers of all types. Native witmeaning the wits with which one is bornis closely synonymous with
common sense
''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political arg ...
. To live by one's wits is to be an
opportunist
Opportunism is the practice of taking advantage of circumstances – with little regard for principles or with what the consequences are for others. Opportunist actions are expedient actions guided primarily by self-interested motives. The term ...
, but not always of the scrupulous kind. To have one's wits about one is to be alert and capable of quick
reason
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...
ing. To be at the end of one's wits ("I'm at my wits' end") is to be immensely
frustrate
In psychology, frustration is a common emotional response to opposition, related to anger, annoyance and disappointment. Frustration arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of an individual's will or goal and is likely to inc ...
d.
See also
*
Hartford Wits
*
New Oxford Wits
The term ''New Oxford Wits'' was applied, around 1980, to a group of young English writers who had been at the University of Oxford in the 1970s. It alludes to the Oxford Wits of the 1920s. Those supposed to be in the ''New Oxford Wits'' were Mar ...
*
Oxford Wits
The ''Oxford Wits'', a term coined later, were an identifiable group of literary and intellectual aesthetes and dandies, present as undergraduates at the University of Oxford in England in the first half of the 1920s.
Their leader in fashion was ...
*
''Wit'' (film)
*
''Wit'' (play)
References
Bibliography
*D. W. Jefferson, "''Tristram Shandy'' and the Tradition of Learned Wit" in ''Essays in Criticism'', 1(1951), 225-49
{{Authority control
Humour
Virtue
Word play
Algonquin Round Table