Pun: n. a form of word play that deliberately exploits ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect. Also known (by an erudite few) as paronomasia. By definition, puns must be deliberate; an involuntary substitution of similar words is called a malapropism, after the verbally challenged Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s 1798 comedy “The Rivals”.
Paronomasia: n. a play on words. (From Greek, para beside + onoma name – to call with a slight change of name).
The pun is often disparagingly referred to as “the lowest form of wit” – which my dad loved twisting into “a bun is the lowest form of wheat.”
Knock-knock jokes are almost always based on puns:
Knock-knock!
Who’s there?
Alaska.
Alaska who?
Alaska no questions, you tell me no lies.
The customary response to a pun is a groan, hence they’re often called “groaners.”
So here’s my groaner. Last week I had waited days for FedEx to bring me a 1 gig memory chip so my laptop would have enough oomph to do a presentation. When it finally arrived, hours before my deadline, I called my daughter triumphantly, “My chip has come in!”
I know you can do better..
My grandpa loved words, poems, and puns.
When I was very little, he ‘gave’ me this poem:
Once I had a wooden whistle, but it wooden whistle.
So I got me a steel whistle, but steel I couldn’t whistle.
Now I have me a tin whistle, now I tin whistle.
There’s a ghost story to go along with this poem, if you’re interested.
I remember telling someone who was bragging about an early season tan, that it was just a ‘pigment of their imagination’. They didn’t get it.
Terrific start, Susan. At one of the links WordPress suggested below was this one for graphic designers:
Two fonts walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out, we don’t serve your type in here.”
“When I saw my first strand of grey hair, I thought I’d dye.”
But my favourite is “A hangover is the wrath of grapes.”
HAHAHA! Keep them coming!
“A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.”
“I have a photographic memory which I’ve never developed.”
A good pun is its own reword.
Sign at a pig farm: “No porking in driveway. ”
Some weather-related puns:
Calm — A nil wind.
Cyclone — The exact duplicate of cy.
Winter — The days of shovelry.
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“A mime is a horrible thing to waste”