Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of, characterized by, or arising from hysteria.
- adj. Having or prone to having hysterics.
- adj. Informal Extremely funny: told a hysterical story.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Same as hysteric, and the more common form.
Wiktionary
- adj. Of, or arising from hysteria.
- adj. Having, or prone to having hysterics.
- adj. Provoking uncontrollable laughter.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. colloq. Extremely funny.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. marked by excessive or uncontrollable emotion
- adj. characterized by or arising from psychoneurotic hysteria
Etymologies
- From hysteric + -al, from Latin hystericus, from Ancient Greek ὑστερικός (husterikos, "suffering in the womb, hysterical"), from ὑστερά (hustera, "womb"). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Some of the little folks we watch grow up to be young women, and occasionally one of them gets nervous, what we call hysterical, and then that girl will begin to play all sorts of pranks, -- to lie and cheat, perhaps, in the most unaccountable way, so that she might seem to a minister a good example of total depravity.”
“The mental benefits to children of all ages through the contact with animals by far exceed the dangers of what I call a hysterical reaction.”
“I find the term hysterical, and personally, I don’t think we use it nearly enough here in the colonies.”
“You should have inserted a pause right there to give the audience time to collapse in hysterical laughter.”
“I was at the airport, in hysterical tears, heartbroken, knowing that she was just too sick to make it through my 20 hour plane ride.”
“Enjoy the crowned one†™ s antics in hysterical tales as he gets mixed up with weird science experiments, football foul-ups, and his cousin, Souphead!”
Archie Sneak Peek of the Week | Major Spoilers - Comic Book Reviews and News
“Stranger still, the root of hysterical is the same as the root of hysterectomy: huster, from the Greek, for womb.”
'Dollhouse' recap: Momma's got a brand new bag of crazy | EW.com
“Following thanks to Janet Reid, just collapsed in hysterical laughter from the start.”
Important Lessons For The Week; Or, Thank God That's Almost Over
“Only slightly less hysterical is his description of why the city has an urban renewal agency:”
Another priceless comedy moment from the O (Jack Bog's Blog)
“As the anchor was hanging up on her, Brenda was in hysterical tears and pleading for her life.”
Almost A Third Of Poll Think Harper Is A Liar « Unambiguously Ambidextrous
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hysterical’.
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Bonkers
List for old and new terms and phrases meaning crazy, nuts, batty, prone to extreme nervousness, etc.
bonkers, crazy, nuts, batty, batchy, bats in the belfry, scatty, crackers, windy, gone crackers, cracked, dingo and 92 more...
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Mentally irregular
Words for the mentally irregular
bonkers, unhinged, batshit crazy, cognitive dissonance, apophenia, undone, loony, unsound, deranged, a bit off the beam, daft, stark ravin' mad and 65 more...
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Autantonyms
Words with mutually exclusive double meanings. Also, here are some:
QUASI-AUTANTONYMS: slow up/slow down; bar/debar; bone/debone; burn up/burn down; fat chance/slim chance; fill in/fil...clip, cleave, sanction, handicap, fast, jibe, secrete, aloha, bimonthly, bolt, cheerio, commencement and 139 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Eric List
This list includes words with 'eric' in them.
hysterical, esoteric, generic, american, cleric, tumeric, america, maverick
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kmalladi's favorites
edification, penchant, ablution, extricate, frank, triumvirate, trifecta, egregious, hoi polloi, articulate, antediluvian, brusque and 291 more...
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Joshee Word List
gash, engross, entail, stoke, ode, vacillate, aspersion, asperity, clan, kith, prospect, nag and 229 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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ifjuly's list
favorite words. some are made up injokes between me and my husband or family.
skein, zaftig, july, bed, orifice, aesthete, ink, parce-que, desormais, cake, pusillanimous, pulse and 531 more...
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Euphemisms
Mostly awful and political.
information campaign, enemy combatant, person of interest, collateral damage, friendly fire, detention centre, children overboard, asylum seeker, health care, national interest, economic management, redeployment and 114 more...
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Bram Stoker's Dracula
Words used in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
decadence, emancipation, nostalgia, abounded, modernity, revolution, famine, conservative, privy, vied, nascent, correspondence and 211 more...
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_mark's list
Words I like!
( personal list, favorite words, randomness )psy, nanobot, success, smack, vibration, microcosmic, springgraph, marksmanship, estranged, homoerotic, flex, fiasco and 1696 more...
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Thunderfoot's Words
lugubrious, salacious, vituperative, foist, foment, embolism, stygian, mellifluous, bildungsroman, shirk, crone, elide and 173 more...
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eloise's Words
embrace, perfect, imagine, dance, water, color, echo, hollow, sorrow, beauty, impossible, violet and 438 more...
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On The Road
It's a book by Jack Kerouac
Vague, jalopy, naïve, emaciated, vindicate, hysterical, Obsequious, Schopenhauer, dichotomy, jargon, phosphorescence, lout and 87 more...
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Christmas Pageant Chapter One
Vocabulary for Chapter One of the Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
cussed, clonked, double-jointed, contagious, volunteer, hydrangea, blackmail, horrified, collared, bobcat, hysterical, penitentiary
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hysterical.

yaybob I realize that this isn’t a humor site, but I had this material prepared for another purpose, and I thought that I’d share it here. These are three YouTube videos, all pretty funny in my estimation. Hopefully, at least one will be unfamiliar to you. The last two are a little ethnic, but I think – at least I hope - not offensive.
You likely have always wondered what the hell lyrics Joe Cocker was singing to A Little Help From My Friends at Woodstock, because they sure as hell aren't the ones everybody else is singing. At last a transcript is available. If only John Belushi had lived to see it.
Continuing in the same vein is this East Indian music video with somebody's interpretation of what the Hindu words sound like in English. This one's a keeper, too. For lack of a better name, here is “My Loony Bun Is Fine, Benny Lava�?
Everybody likes hymns, and with the holidays fast approaching, what could be more timely and welcome. Here's O-mazing Grace (how sweet the sound!). Nobody's going to ever figure these lyrics out. It's bad from the beginning, but don't quit it early. OG teases us at 1:39 with a taste of what is to come, but he doesn’t really takes it up until 2:08. And stay for the riveting finale, beginning around 3:00! This is truly one of the worst musical performances ever, bar none. Truly awful, but stunningly funny.
Dec 9, 2008
oroboros Funny v. terrified. May 23, 2008
kewpid A rather misogynistic term. May 22, 2008
thunderfoot Its funny because its uterus. Dec 1, 2006