What's the difference between droll and funny?

Droll


Definition:

  • (superl.) Queer, and fitted to provoke laughter; ludicrous from oddity; amusing and strange.
  • (n.) One whose practice it is to raise mirth by odd tricks; a jester; a buffoon; a merry-andrew.
  • (n.) Something exhibited to raise mirth or sport, as a puppet, a farce, and the like.
  • (v. i.) To jest; to play the buffoon.
  • (v. t.) To lead or influence by jest or trick; to banter or jest; to cajole.
  • (v. t.) To make a jest of; to set in a comical light.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "It's like revisiting an old world," says Topley-Bird, who is droll and spacey where Tricky is hyperactively chatty.
  • (2) Obama's roommates were Paul Carpenter, a blond southern Californian who occasionally took his friends surfing (bodysurfing, in Barry's case), and Imad Husain, an intellectual Pakistani with a droll sense of humour who grew up in Karachi (though his parents now lived in Dubai) and finished his secondary education at Bedford School in the UK.
  • (3) She is by far the most popular …" Ms Harman was careful not to smile at this gallant jibe, but most of the shadow cabinet thought it very droll and smiled happily.
  • (4) Patterson says that she felt the most sympathy for her father, quietly droll, music-loving, a former Japanese POW.
  • (5) Tom was unsuited to the home-improvement periodicals for which he wrote in the late 70s, but in 1980 his droll and quizzical reviews began to appear in New Music News, an underground rock weekly launched by Felix Dennis to fill the vacuum left by the strike-bound NME and Melody Maker.
  • (6) She is the drama's underdog, but Lindqvist's droll, bullish performance elicits the most memorable moments of humour and pathos (as well as several uncomfortable moments in that bikini).
  • (7) His show was loose and disconnected, delivered in a droll, semi-stoned style that allowed him to ramble gently from one topic to the next.
  • (8) Here he reviews games with droll and super-fast wit, against a backdrop of animation.
  • (9) What happened to the droll and down-to-earth candidate who, without a qualm, is now embracing the Bonapartist style of Charles de Gaulle's presidency?
  • (10) Fuck it.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Droll model: comedian Michael Che.
  • (11) "He was like, 'I've thrown parents in the pool before, don't make me throw you,'" says Tony, adopting a hangdog look and mimicking Murray in the lowest, most droll voice possible.
  • (12) Most of all, I will miss his style: his suave deportment; his droll sense of humour; his understatement and his physical energy; his articulacy; his charm; his grace.
  • (13) It's been significantly updated – the stand-out moment for me was when Beryl and Betty did a rap over Don't Stop Me Now (they do the words – "I'm a sex machine, ready to reload", which is droll for their dry delivery – but they also chat all the way through: "I think you were out of tune, there".
  • (14) In a presentation so droll that the people who came after him kicked off with "We're not going to be as enjoyable as that, I'm afraid", Haslam emphasised activity, more activity, sustainable activity – best of all, routine activity, that is built into your life and carries on regardless of the weather, or whether you've broken your arm.
  • (15) 1 Know thine enemy It is droll to observe nutritional advice at the public health level; governments and their agencies always approach obesity as though it were a problem of information or – in the popular phrasing – "awareness".
  • (16) Friday's launch was fun (cue Zuckerberg's droll status update: "Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on Nasdaq") but there's a tendency to see stock market flotations as the culmination of a company's existence.
  • (17) Every morning, he announces the location of each piece on his website and invites people to call a hotline for droll descriptions of the artwork's inspiration.
  • (18) Tristram is quite droll about the demands of the narrative, and describes the distance it puts between her and the disease as a kind of relief.
  • (19) His LinkedIn account is also testament to a droll sense of humour with a minimal CV.
  • (20) All very droll – but perhaps the self-proclaimed "cock of the walk" might like to think about letting the dust settle?

Funny


Definition:

  • (superl.) Droll; comical; amusing; laughable.
  • (n.) A clinkerbuit, narrow boat for sculling.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) However, as the plan unravels, Professor Marcus's team turn on one another, with painfully (if painfully funny) results.
  • (2) The reality is I like football so much, I miss football, and when I have the chance to be back I will come back.” Mourinho, who was joined by his agent Jorge Mendes to speak to children at the NorthLight school as part of the Valencia chairman Peter Lim’s Olympic scholarship, added: “It’s quite a funny career.
  • (3) The name suggests it is a clever but funny channel that it's OK to like.
  • (4) He just look sideways and for some reason it’s funny.” But Clement himself names Rhys Darby, aka the Conchords’ manager, Murray, who plays a werewolf in Shadows, as the funniest man he has ever worked with – even if he does appear in “too many ads”.
  • (5) Take feedback when it's offered In common with all the other judges on Show Me The Funny, I'm not entirely comfortable with judging other comedians.
  • (6) And then her drug use got harder, and more desperate, and then it wasn't funny any more; and then, when she was trying to clean up, she was dead, gone to join "the stupid club", as Kurt Cobain's mother described all the rock stars who end up dead at 27.
  • (7) Christine Langan of BBC Films told Screen Daily: "Compelling, funny and moving, Gold is a gem of a story and BBC Films is proud to be participating in bringing it to an international audience."
  • (8) When we had a morning practice session, and some players were a bit sluggish, he would call them out to the middle of the pitch and shout: ‘Dilly-ding, dilly-dong!’ When I read this story about Leicester, I just started laughing because all those funny moments with him came rushing back into my head.” That Ranieri has a sense of humour is hardly new information.
  • (9) Afternoon Delights doesn't have anything approaching a mission statement – it's just two middle-aged men arsing about, frankly – but its gleeful anarchism can be riotously funny: witness the pair as free runners, declaring "war against the urban environment", or their magnificently coiffed Rock'n'Rollers, with the aid of subtitles, showing off their moves on the streets of Ashford, Kent.
  • (10) So like I said, it’s funny to be a woman, in a world that judges you solely by what you do with your vagina: whether any babies have come out of it, and what you are doing with it.
  • (11) And if you're really funny, then provided you're not punching people when you come off, or stealing people's belongings, then you'll get a gig.
  • (12) The first time I heard about legislation banning " homosexual propaganda ", I thought it was funny.
  • (13) But it was funny and interesting also because it really showed that, maybe, I can still bring something to a team.” This will be Drogba’s second departure from Stamford Bridge having initially left for Shanghai Shenhua in 2012 in the immediate aftermath of his winning penalty in the shoot-out against Bayern Munich which saw Chelsea claim the European Cup .
  • (14) Even so, the whole thing was knocked together for a fraction of a normal commercial and it's a pretty funny spoof of a cliché-ridden car advert.
  • (15) "It was a funny afternoon," said Pardew whose side have won seven and drawn one of their last nine Premier League games.
  • (16) In his five-star review for Time Out New York , David Cote calls it "gobsmackingly funny".
  • (17) First in line was Conservative Richard Fuller, who he believed was looking at him in a funny way.
  • (18) Funny on its own, even funnier with funny music playing beneath it .
  • (19) The Gogglebox people are all nice(ish) and funny(ish), qualities vital to keep at bay total self-loathing that we are gathered as a family, watching on telly other people watching telly.
  • (20) He is also characterised as "the devoted husband of a bestselling novelist with a few of her own ideas about how fiction works"; a funny sentence construction that carries a faint whiff of husband stoically bent over his books as wife keeps popping up with pesky theories about realism.