When Funny Isn't Funny in English

Ah, I just hit my funny bone against this tree here.

Your funny bone is back here by your elbow.

And when you hit your funny bone,

it makes your hand and arm

feel a little bit strange for a second.

It makes them feel a little bit tingly.

If you think about it though,

there's nothing funny about it.

Normally, when you say something is funny,

it means it makes you laugh.

If you say a joke is funny,

it means the joke made you laugh.

But when you hit your funny bone,

it doesn't make you laugh.

It actually hurts a little bit.

So it's an example of an English term

where we use the word funny,

but not in the normal sense

of what the word funny means.

It actually means strange

or to feel a little bit weird.

In this English lesson,

I'll teach you nine more ways that we use

the word funny that aren't funny at all.

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So sometimes in English,

we'll use the term funny looking to describe something

if we don't like how it looks.

Maybe your friend bought a new car

and he thinks it looks amazing

but you think it looks a little bit strange.

You might say, "Your car's kind of funny looking."

Maybe your friend got a new dog

and the dog has super long ears

and really long hair on its head,

but short hair on the rest of its body.

It just looks a little strange.

You might say, "Oh, your dog is kind of funny looking."

So another way we use the word funny is in the term

funny looking to describe something

that just looks a little strange or weird.

Do you ever think something might happen?

In English, we would call this a funny feeling.

When you have a funny feeling,

it means you think something is going to happen.

The other day, I brought my van

to the garage and I had a funny feeling

that it was going to be very expensive to fix it.

I wasn't sure it was going to be expensive,

but I knew it needed an oil change

and it was making some strange sounds.

So I had a funny feeling

that it was going to be expensive to get it fixed.

So another way we use funny in English

is to say a funny feeling, and a funny feeling

is when you just think something might happen.

Now, this is different

than saying that something feels funny.

If I was to say my stomach feels funny

or my head feels funny,

it would mean I'm not feeling well.

It would mean I'm feeling a little bit sick.

Sometimes when I'm at school, a student will say,

"Can I call my mom or dad?

Because my stomach feels funny,"

or "my head feels funny.

I have a bit of a headache."

So when you say part of your body feels funny,

it means it feels abnormal.

It means you're feeling a little bit sick

or a little bit under the weather.

Hmm, there's a funny smell out here.

Yeah, definitely a funny smell.

When you describe something

like a smell using the word funny,

it doesn't mean that it's making me laugh.

It means that there is a strange smell out here.

There is a weird smell out here.

There's a smell out here and I don't recognize it.

There's definitely a funny smell out here.

Sometimes when I open the fridge in the house

there's a funny smell.

Usually it means the milk has gone bad.

The milk has gone sour,

but initially I don't know what it is.

So I would just describe it by saying,

"Hey, there's a funny smell in here.

There's a strange smell.

There's a weird smell.

There's a really bad smell in this fridge."

So I mentioned the other day,

I took my van to the garage.

One of the reasons I brought it to the garage

is because it was making a funny sound.

Again, we can use the word funny to describe something

like a sound when it's unrecognizable,

when it's a mystery,

when we don't know why the sound is there,

or what's making the sound.

Sometimes when I come outside, I hear a funny sound.

Sometimes when it's really windy,

I'll hear a funny sound

and I won't know what the sound is.

It is unrecognizable.

So another way we use the word funny

is to describe something that we don't recognize,

something that is unrecognizable.

So sometimes I make my English lessons in my local town.

And when I do that, sometimes people give me a funny look.

When someone gives you a funny look,

it means that they stare at you for a bit,

or they kind of go like,

"What's that guy doing?"

When you're standing in a town with a camera,

and when you're talking to the camera,

it probably looks a little bit strange.

And so people tend to give you a funny look.

They give you a funny look

because you're doing something that's abnormal.

So once again, a funny look could be a stare

or a funny look could be something like this,

where someone just makes a funny face

because they're not sure what you're doing.

When my kids were younger,

and when we would go for a long drive,

sometimes I would say to them,

"Be quiet while dad's driving.

No funny business back there."

Funny business refers to any kind of misbehavior.

Sometimes when we go on a trip at school

and when we go on a school bus,

I'll say to the kids at the very back of the bus,

"No funny business while we're driving down the road."

What I mean by that is don't throw things.

Don't fight.

Don't jump up and down.

Don't yell at each other.

Don't misbehave, no funny business

when you're riding in a van with me,

or when you're riding on a bus.

Sometimes in English we'll use the phrase,

"The funny thing is,"

to describe something that didn't make sense to us.

A long time ago, someone broke into my car

and they took all of my CDs.

This was a long time ago.

They took all of my CDs,

but my wallet was also in the car.

And the funny thing is, they didn't take my wallet.

So I'm using the phrase,

"The funny thing is," to describe a situation

that didn't make sense to me.

It didn't make sense that they would break into my car,

take all of my CDs and not take my wallet.

So one of the ways we describe something

in English that seems at little odd to us

is to use the phrase, "The funny thing is."

Another phrase we use quite often

in English that has the word funny in it

is the phrase, "Funny you should ask."

And this is best explained

by me giving you a couple of examples.

Let's say Jen went out to the flower field

and she cut all kinds of daffodils.

If someone called and said,

"Do you have any daffodils for sale?"

Jen could respond by saying,

"Funny you should ask.

I just went to the field

and cut a whole bunch of daffodils."

Let's say someone was to ask me,

"Bob, can you make an English lesson

about how to talk about our daily routines?"

I could say, "Funny, you should ask.

I just did a lesson this past Friday

about how to talk about your daily routine."

So it's a way to answer someone

if there's kind of a coincidence.

If what they're asking for is something

that you've already just recently done,

you would respond by saying,

"Funny you should ask."

Well, hey, thank you so much

for watching this English lesson

where I hope you learned a few more ways

to use the word funny in English.

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