humorist

• humourist

From humor +‎ -ist.

humorist (plural humorists)

1. (medicine, now rare, historical) Someone who believes that health and temperament are determined by bodily humours; a humoralist. [from 16th c.]
2. (obsolete) Someone subject to whims or fancies; an eccentric. [16th–19th c.]
   • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:

     She and the duke used to rally me upon my fondness for lord W—m, who was a sort of an humourist, and apt to be in a pet, in which case he would leave the company, and go to bed by seven o'clock in the evening.

   • 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 175:

     I called on him and found him a contemporary of Beauclerk and Langton at Trinity College, Oxford, and a man of reading and animation, but a kind of humourist.

3. A humorous or witty person, especially someone skilled in humorous writing or performance. [from 17th c.]
   • 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:

     Peter, after the manner of man at the breakfast table, had allowed half his kedgeree to get cold and was sniggering over a letter. Sophia looked at him sharply. The only letter she had received was from her mother. Sophia's mother was not a humourist.

4. One who studies or portrays the humours of people.

• comedian / comedienne
• comic
• clown
• jester

humorist m (plural humoriști, feminine equivalent humoristă)

1. Alternative spelling of umorist.