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A pun (also known as '''paronomasia''') is a Figure Of Speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar Word s or Phrase s for Rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. A pun can rely on the assumed equivalency of multiple similar words ( Homonymy ), of different shades of meaning of one word ( Polysemy ), or of a literal meaning with a Metaphor . Bad puns are sometimes called " Cheesy ". Walter Redfern (in ''Puns'', Blackwell, London, 1984) succinctly said: "To pun is to treat Homonym s as Synonym s". In order to be able to pun effectively it is necessary that a Language must include homonyms which may readily be misrepresented as synonyms. Languages with complex gender or case structures tend not to facilitate this, although puns can be constructed in all languages with varying degrees of difficulty; i.e. puns are said to be easy to construct in languages such as Chinese or English, but rarer in Russian. 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 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 Italian 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 ''corn''ered 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''. Or this one about various lower life forms: I ''moss'' say I'm taking a ''lichen'' to that ''fun-gi'', even though his jokes are in ''spore'' taste. ''Algae'' the first to say that they ''mushroom'' out of control. A Discrete Anti-contextual Pun refers to two different situations, or contexts, by using a word or phrase that may have two or more meanings, but only one of which makes sense in the context. For example: If you are talking to your friend on his cell phone, and the call is dropped, he may say to you later, "sorry, no room service." This pun refers to the fact that he has no service to his cell phone in his room, and he also does not have room-service (referring to food being delivered to his room via a phone call). Multi-functional layered ironic Pun: The above pun can also fit into this prestigious category of pun because in order to get room-service (the food), he must make a phone call, which he cannot make because he has no room service (cell phone service). USAGE Humor is the most common intent of puns in recent times. It is a form particularly admired in Britain, and forms a core element of the British cult comedy show I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue . 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 '', Hamlet , '' The Simpsons '', the Carmen Sandiego Computer Game s, 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 , Robert Bloch , and others like Sing money 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"'' 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.'' One interpretation could be that Donne is 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'' The humorous writer Terry Pratchett refers to puns as ''a pune, or play on words'' in his Discworld novels. 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 Stone s as well as in Cartoon s such as ''Lost Consonants'' or '' The Far Side ''. Even in the most dire of situations, humor is often appropriate. The foremost example of this is the writer Robert Bloch , author of such work as '' Psycho '' (the book before the movie). Even in the infamous Shower Scene , Bloch slips in a pun with the butcher knife, both cutting through Marion's peace of mind (and a good deal more). One excerpt, as the knife descends, reads "First, it cut off her scream...then her head." No other writer has come as close in merging Humor and Horror , as numorous examples of his work show. Russia n NBA player Andrei Kirilenko has chosen to wear the number 47, unusual in the NBA, on his gear, because of the coincidence that his initials together with this number form the abbreviation AK-47 , the name of the famous Russian rifle, named after its inventor and the year it was invented (Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947). Official puns are rare, but there are a few:
Numerous pun formats exist:
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 Backronym s and other nonsensically coined words. SEE ALSO
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