What does funnier mean?
'Funnier' is the comparative form of the English adjective 'funny', meaning more amusing, more comical, or more likely to provoke laughter than something else. It belongs firmly to everyday, informal language: people use it to rank comedians, compare sitcom episodes, or declare one friend's anecdote better than another's. Because humor is subjective, 'funnier' almost always carries an implicit judgment as well as a comparison — saying one joke is funnier than another is both a measurement and an opinion. The word typically pairs with 'than' to name what it is being measured against, though it also appears on its own for emphasis, as in remarks like 'it only got funnier'. Its comparative form follows the regular pattern for two-syllable adjectives ending in -y, which drop the y and add -ier rather than taking an -er suffix directly. Simple, expressive, and universally understood, 'funnier' captures how naturally we grade the world's comedy on a sliding scale.
adjective (comparative form of 'funny')The comparative form of the adjective 'funny', meaning more amusing or more likely to cause laughter than something else.
- More amusing or laugh-provoking than another thing (the standard comparative sense)
- Occasionally used absolutely for emphasis in informal speech to mean simply very amusing ('that's funnier than anything')
"The comedian's improvised banter was far funnier than his scripted material."
"Her impression of the manager was funnier than anything the professional comedians had done all night."
"As the evening wore on and everyone got sillier, the jokes only got funnier."
Despite what the internet claims, there's no solid evidence that adding 'than a box of frogs' makes anything officially funnier — but 'funnier' itself is proof that even humor gets graded on a scale.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of funnier
The adjective 'funny' derives from the noun 'fun', which appeared in English in the early eighteenth century as a slang term meaning a trick or hoax, possibly connected to an older verb 'funk'. As 'fun' shifted from meaning trickery to meaning amusement, 'funny' emerged in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to describe something causing laughter. 'Funnier' is simply the regular comparative inflection of this adjective, formed by dropping the final -y and adding -ier.
Related word forms
How funnier is actually used
'Funnier' is informal-to-neutral in register and appears constantly in everyday conversation, comedy reviews, and casual writing. It can be used with or without an explicit 'than' comparison; when used alone it implies an unstated point of comparison. Some style-conscious writers avoid comparatives of subjective qualities like humor, but 'funnier' is thoroughly established and unremarkable in modern usage.
Easily confused with funnier
'Funny' is the base adjective describing something amusing, while 'funnier' is its comparative form, used specifically when comparing two things' capacity to amuse.