Definition of "humorist"

humorist

noun
plural humorists
1. (medicine, now rare, historical) Someone who believes that health and temperament are determined by bodily humours; a humoralist.
2. (obsolete) Someone subject to whims or fancies; an eccentric.
  Quotations
  She and the duke used to rally me upon my fondness for lord W—m, who was a sort of an humourist, and apt to be in a pet, in which case he would leave the company, and go to bed by seven o'clock in the evening.
  1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […]
  I called on him and found him a contemporary of Beauclerk and Langton at Trinity College, Oxford, and a man of reading and animation, but a kind of humourist.
  1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 175
3. A humorous or witty person, especially someone skilled in humorous writing or performance.
  Quotations
  Peter, after the manner of man at the breakfast table, had allowed half his kedgeree to get cold and was sniggering over a letter. Sophia looked at him sharply. The only letter she had received was from her mother. Sophia's mother was not a humourist.
  1922, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in The Cuckoo in the Nest‎
4. One who studies or portrays the humours of people.