| 词汇 | funny bone |
| 词源 | funny bone. They have pull’d you down flat on your back, And they smack, and they thwack, Till your “funny bones” crack, As if you were stretched on the rack, At each thwack! Good lack! what a savage attack! Reverend Richard Harris Barham, well known for his pun- ning, wrote the above in The Ingoldsby Legends (1840) and it is the first mention of the expression funny bone in literature. The funny bone—Americans called it the crazy bone in the past—is technically the medial condyle of the humerus, that is, the enlarged knob on the end of the bone of the upper arm, which lies below the ulnar nerve. The unpadded nerve hits the humerus as if against an anvil when we strike it on some- thing, causing sharp, tingling pain. Nothing is very funny about this—it inspires cursing rather than laughter. But Barham or some punster before him probably saw the pun humorous in the humerus bone and dubbed it the funny bone, adding one of the few puns that have become phrases to the language. |
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