A corpus-based study of adjective synonyms: funny, humorous and hilarious

This study examines the similarities and differences of three adjective synonyms—funny, humorous and hilarious—based on two criteria, which are degree of formality and collocations. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English was used for extracting meanings and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) for gathering information across the eight genres. It was found that all the three words tend to be used in informal contexts and therefore have a low degree of formality. As for their collocations, it is found that all three words share some common nouns and adverbs, but they also possess some collocates that are unique to themselves. Thus, they cannot be used in all circumstances in the same way.