What Do We Mean by 'Fun'?

Thought for the Fortnight

My father says something ‘fun’ to my daughter, 1995.

I have had the good luck to have lived virtually all my life with someone who was/is fun. My dad was widely known for his sense of fun and, perhaps unusually, it was a quality heavily emphasised at his memorial service.

My husband, to whom I have been married nearly 62 years, also has a deep sense of fun. Although I didn’t think about this at the time we married, I suspect the parallel between the two is not accidental.

Fun is not something that we talk about all that often. Yet it is important. It adds a sparkle to one’s life. And heaven knows we need that these days. Or any time.

Defining fun

But what is fun?

No, I don’t mean what activities give you pleasure, but what is the essence of the concept, i.e. what does ‘fun’ really mean?

It turns out to be damned difficult to define.

Formally, it seems to be equated with ‘enjoyable’. The OED defines fun as “light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merry-making; entertainment”.

Much as I am reluctant to argue with that venerable source, that doesn’t quite do it for me. For a start, when is the last time anyone talked about ‘merry-making’ to you?

And fun, to me, is not the same as simple enjoyment – it denotes something a little bit different, even surprising. Out of routine. Something unanticipated and, perhaps, spontaneous. There is often an element of ‘play’.

Of course, we all experience fun differently.

Rona Maynard

wrote recently about how much fun a new dog brought into her life. Many parents – and, indeed, grandparents – would say the same about young children, particularly toddlers. We have surprising fun with our 15 year old grandson, as described in my recent post about him bringing Attila the Hun into discussions of American politics.

And many – loads – would say that fun is going to the pub with a group of friends, or going on a joint outing with a lot of laughs.

But for me, fun is not usually the result of alcohol or the high spirits of groups. It is often verbal – and between two or three people.

My family and fun

My dad used to make just about anything fun. He didn’t simply make pancakes for our breakfast – he made pancakes in the shape of the eater’s initials, running into trouble immediately with the A of my name. It made breakfast a laugh.

He loved to tell stories, to amuse people, to go just-far-enough-but-not-too-far in the off-colour department with people of all ages, even teenage friends I brought home from school. He had a real knack for getting away with that.

He never simply told me off – he did so with a quotation from the Bible or Shakespeare. King Lear was often quoted at me: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth…” he would proclaim and stop with a smile. The quote finishes, as you doubtless know, with “it is to have a thankless child”. He never needed to finish it.

And evidently he was not reluctant to engage in fun in the sexual department, although I knew nothing about this (except when he was 90). See this post as well as this one.

For many years, he worked for the US Civil Service and once claimed that a small group of colleagues put a passage from Alice in Wonderland in a Government report to see if anyone noticed. I don’t know if this was his idea, but it well could have been. (Note to DOGE: you can relax – this was in the 1930s.)

The photo is of my dad (in a terrible jacket, inherited from a friend) in his later years at dinner with my daughter in his retirement community. He has clearly just told her something funny – or possibly off-colour – or both. The look on her face says it all.

My husband also lights up people’s lives. He loves to flirt with every woman around – of whatever age – and knows just how to make her feel very good while conveying with no doubt whatsoever that it is not serious, but all in good fun. They love it.

Whenever he precedes me going somewhere, even very sober places like passport checks, I almost always find the person smiling when I get there. Even men. I don’t know what he says – he himself says he doesn’t know what he says – but somehow it works to brighten up their day.

With me, it is usually saying something surprising. (Warning - you have to read this with the knowledge that we adore each other, otherwise it might sound terrible.) It might be a compliment of sorts, such as saying I was no longer ‘on approval’ on our fiftieth wedding anniversary. Or it might be slightly insulting or ambiguous, like telling me that our neighbour looked “a million dollars” while I looked “well, perhaps half a million.” And sometimes it is both at once, as he did the other day, “Why don’t you waddle over here and give me a kiss?”

Fairly early in the relationship, I realised that I could reply in kind. I often do. It’s very much a part of our daily lives together. A kind of marital banter.

Fun is often in the moment

One aspect of fun, to me, is that it is something in the moment. Ephemeral. The laugh you had over something, but it doesn’t translate when you retell it later to someone else. The way someone put something that was unexpected.

These moments are all too easily forgotten, much as they are wonderful at the time.

I was trying to think of an example and the only one that came to mind was from a family lunch some years ago, when we were having some unusual cheeses. My son looked at one and declared, almost under his breath, “That cheese smells like a medieval village.” As written now, that doesn’t seem so funny, but at the time, it cracked us all up. Such a wonderful image out of the blue.

And people rarely take photos when they are having fun of this kind - they are too busy being in that moment. I looked through a lot of photos to find the one shown here. I have no idea who took it – I wasn’t there.

The importance of fun

When people define the characteristics of someone they would like to live with or marry, fun is rarely part of the picture. They seek good looks, intelligence, good character or, indeed, wealth. The only way that fun enters the picture is the famous GSOH (good sense of humour) on some dating sites, which may or may not fit this bill.

To me, it is essential.

Yet the more I have tried to explain what it is, the more elusive it has become. I feel the definition disintegrating between my fingers.

Perhaps fun is something that we all recognise when we see it but can’t agree on a definition.

You all know I love to engender some response. Tell me how you define fun – I have struggled, so now it is your turn. Or whether fun is important to you. Or anything else that comes to mind. I always look forward to hearing what you have to say.