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A pun (also known as paronomasia) is a figure of speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. A pun can rely on the assumed equivalency of multiple similar horse words (homonymy), of different shades of meaning of one word (polysemy), or of a literal meaning with a metaphor. Bad puns are often considered to be cheesy.

Walter Redfern (in Puns, Blackwell, London, 1984) succinctly said: "To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms".

Contents 1 Etymology 2 Typology 3 Usage 4 Computer science 5 Unfortunate events 6 See also 7 Quotations 8 External links

Etymology

The word pun itself is thought to be originally a contraction of the (now archaic) pundigrion. This latter term is thought to have originated from punctilious,which itself derived from the Italian puntiglio (originally meaning "a fine point"), diminutive of punto, "point", from the Latin punctus, past participle of pungere, "to prick." These etymological sources are reported in the Oxford English Dictionary, which nonetheless labels them "conjecture".

Typology

Puns can be subdivided into several varieties:

• Homographic puns are puns which exploit the difference in meanings of words which look alike (and usually sound alike).
  For example: "Being in politics is just like playing golf: you are trapped in one bad lie after another." (Pun on the two meanings of lie - "a deliberate untruth"/"the position in which something rests").
• Homographic puns which exploit the difference in meanings of words which look alike but have different pronunciations are technically Heteronymic, though this distinction is disused.
  For example: "Q: What instrument do fish like to play? A: A bass guitar." (Pun on the identical spelling of /beıs/ (low frequency), and /bæs/ (a kind of fish)).
• Homophonic puns are puns which exploit the difference in meanings of words which sound alike but have different spellings.
  For example, "I've no idea how worms reproduce but you often find them in /pers/." (Pun on the identical pronunciation of "pears" and "pairs").
• Double-sound, where words which are similar but not identical are intentionally confused.
  For example: "What do you call an inverse chicken? Poultry." (Pun on the similar-sounding "poultry" and "poetry" where "poetry" is derived from an alternative reading of "inverse" as two words, "in verse," alluding to poetry).

Homographic puns are sometimes compared to the stylistic device antanaclasis; homophonic puns, to polyptoton; but they are not identical.

The compound pun is one in which multiple puns are colocated for additional and amplified effect. Examples of this are the following:

Three brothers asked their mother to think of a name for their cattle-ranch. She suggested Focus Ranch, which rather puzzled them until she explained that "'Focus' means where the sun's rays meet (sons raise meat)."

A sign in a golf-cart shop reads "When drinking, don't drive. Don't even putt." (The puns are on "driving" and "putting" a golf ball, vs. "driving" a car or "putting" around in a golf cart.)

The last exchange of a knock knock joke runs: Q: "Eskimo Christian Italian who?" A: "Eskimo Christian Italia no lies." (The pun, involving an indeterminate number of sub-puns, is on the phrase "Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies".)

Extended puns occur when multiple puns referring to one general idea are used throughout a longer utterance. An example of this is the following story about a fight, with extended puns about cookery:

A fight broke out in a kitchen. Egged on by the waiters, two cooks peppered each other with punches. One man, a greasy foie gras specialist, ducked the first blows, but his goose was cooked when the other cold-cocked him. The man who beet him, a weedy salad expert with big cauliflower ears, tried to flee the scene, but was cornered in the maize of tables by a husky off-duty cob. He was charged with a salt and battery. He claims to look forward to the suit, as he's always wanted to be a sous-chef.

Usage

Humor is the most common intent of puns in recent times.

While generally eschewed in more formal settings, puns of greater or lesser subtlety are employed to good effect by many popular artists and writers. For example, names based on puns (such as calling Justin Thyme a character who is always almost late) can be found in Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, The Eyre Affair, Asterix, The Simpsons, the Carmen Sandiego computer games, and just about everything Spider Robinson has ever written, especially the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series.

In music, puns often find their way into hip hop/rap music.

In addition to works of popular culture, puns are also found in "serious" literature. See Alexander Pope, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and others discussed under word play. In the past, the serious pun was an important and standard rhetorical or poetic device, as in Shakespeare's Richard III:

"made glorious summer by this son of York"
(pun on homophony of "son" and "sun")

John Donne is another who used serious puns in his work. For instance, he puns repeatedly on his own name (which is pronounced "Dun") in his poem "A Hymn to God the Father". Twice after imploring God to forgive certain kinds of sins and weaknesses, he ends a stanza by saying

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

Donne is clearly saying, "God, when you have forgiven me this much, you are not done (finished)/you do not have John Donne (safe yet), for I have more sins to confess." (Some think the last line is a pun on the name of Donne's wife, Ann More. This does not fit Donne's meaning, however.) In the third stanza, having received assurance, counteracting his fears,

that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore

(another Son/sun pun), he ends the poem

And having done that, Thou hast done;

I fear no more.

A biblical pun of serious intent is found in Matthew 16.18:

"Thou art Peter [Greek Πετρος, Petros], and upon this rock [Greek πετρα, petra] I will build my church."
(pun on the double meaning of petros/Petros: in the first part of the sentence the word appears to stand for a personal name, but in the second, petra ("rock") makes the listener reevaluate the first petros as its second meaning, "stone"). However, there is considerable debate if this pun was intended by the speaker, since in the langauge in which Jesus spoke (Aramaic), the pun doesn't work. The pun only works in the written Greek.

Often enough, puns are created without the knowledge of the speaker. For example, a television show once depicted a man who had been impaled by an anchor. When interviewed, the surgeon who performed the operation used the common phrase, "He sailed through it" (meaning that the operation was easy), which is a pun given that an anchor is used during literal sailing. If such spontaneous punnery is noticed, it is often followed by the apologetic phrase: "no pun intended".

European heraldry contains the technique of canting arms, which can be considered punning. Visual puns, in which the image is at odds with the inscription, are also common in Dutch gable stones as well as in cartoons such as Lost Consonants or The Far Side.

Official puns are rare, but there are a few:

• K-9, pronounced "canine", for war dogs or police dogs follows the military pattern of designations, such as G-2.
• "Curb your dog", the command on former New York City street signs that combined a requirement to leash a dog with a requirement that dogs be taken to the gutter for defecation. (The signs were replaced after pooper scooper laws were passed.)
• The US 4th Infantry Division patch has four ivy leaves on it, from the Roman numeral for 4, IV. (This may be an example of canting arms; see above.)
• Although the amphibious military truck called a DUKW may appear to have a punning name, in fact the designation follows standard military vehicle designations from the World War II period.

Numerous pun formats exist:

• Tom Swifty
• Spoonerism
• Knock-knock joke
• Shaggy dog story
• Daffynition
• Transpositional pun
• Bilingual pun

Computer science

The word "pun" is used with a slightly different sense in some computer science and hacking cultures to indicate a term with multiple meanings. For example it might be said that the + operator is punned for string concatenation (in this case, it refers to operator overloading).

Unfortunate events

Sometimes, mutually coincidental elements in situations (e.g. 2 situations with similar sounding words) can prompt coinage for a pun. One example can be backronyms and other nonsensically coined words.

See also

• Anagram
• Antanaclasis
• Forster's Syndrome
• Humor
• Insult
• Letter game
• Mondegreen
• Neologism
• Palindrome
• Polyptoton
• Portmanteau

• List of portmanteaus

• Riddle

Quotations

• "The pun is mightier than the sword." - James Joyce in ???
• "As different as York from Leeds" - James Joyce in Finnegans Wake, a play on "As different as chalk from cheese".
• "A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket." - John Dennis, 1781
• "He that would pun, would pick a pocket" —Alexander Pope, punster
• "Blunt and I made atrocious puns. I believe, indeed, that Miss Blunt herself made a little punkin, as I called it" —Henry James
• "Pun (n.): the lowest form of humour" —Samuel Johnson, lexicographer
  • "…but the height of wit." —common rebuttal to the above
  • "…when you didn't think of it first." —another common rebuttal
• "A bun is the lowest form of wheat" —Anon.
• "The eleventh pun always gets a laugh, even if no pun in ten did." —Anon.
• "Heralds don't pun; they cant." SCA heralds' expression
• "Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted." —Fred Allen

External links

• On the relative (un)translatability of puns
• Pun of the Day
• PunGents