In a message dated 9/9/2004 12:47:30 AM Eastern Standard Time, ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: Point taken, but I think this is an urban and modern perspective. Your French peasant four hundred or so years back--see, for example, "The Return of Martin Guerre," book or movie--used Charivari to police signs of otherness within the village and was immediately suspicious of travelers, vagrants, ex-soldiers, protestants, people with ideas about how return on land might be maximized. What's funny to him is putting a frog in the bed of someone who is not providing the village with children, and the idea of one among the villagers could travel to Paris. ----- Interesting. But I assume the distance this 'idea' (or _humour_) between the village and Paris was not a great one, and thus, 'humour travelled'. I was wondering how far humour _can_ travel. In a global village, it is assumed that it _will_ travel. I looked up in the OED for collocations with 'humour' and 'travel' -- to no avail. But it seems to me that in this sort of intransitive use of 'travel' (unless it's understood as ellipsisitcal for 'travel places') it's _humour_ we first question: humour travels that kind of humour travels. that kind of humour does not travel. That is, it seems to me that, first and foremost, is the idea of humour achieving its purpose in Point A and in Point B that seem to concern people most. We don't usually speak of a sense of justice that travels, or that shame travels, for example. Cheers, JL ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html