Crossword clues for pun
pun
- So-called "lowest form of humor"
- The title of this puzzle, e.g.
- Wordplay from Groucho
- "Poultry in motion," e.g.
- Feature of many a Ludacris lyric
- Feature of many a Duchamp work
- Many a Weird Al Yankovic title
- Many a "?" clue in a crossword
- Title like "The Santa Clause" or "Knight and Day"
- "Ugh, German sausage is the wurst," e.g.
- "Horse voice," e.g.
- One of "the highest form of literature," per Hitchcock
- A humorous play on words
- "Mir"
- Groan producer
- Word play
- Calembour
- "Maid in Japan," e.g.
- Groan provoker
- Homophone, maybe
- Equivoke
- Paronomasia
- Witticism
- "Canoe row a boat?" is one
- Cerf specialty
- Paronomastic witticism
- "Abel was I ere I saw Cain," e.g.
- Jeu de mots
- Sometimes it's funny
- "Sticks float; they wood" is one
- It seldom made Cerf bored
- Certain bit of wit
- Amuse with words
- Many a New York Post headline
- Knock-knock joke, e.g.
- Play on words
- Groaner
- So-called "lowest form of wit"
- Subject of a Swift essay
- Equivoque
- Knock-knock joke, essentially
- Bit of paronomasia
- Wit's end?
- "MirГі, MirГі, on the wall," e.g.
- "Dollars, taxes," e.g., for Dallas, Texas
- 20-, 39- or 53-Across, say
- Bit of Cerf humor
- Smile producer
- "Let us spray," e.g.
- Many a crossword clue
- Many an "Airplane!" gag
- It may involve a homophone
- "Queen of denial" for Queen of the Nile
- Bit of wit
- "The Santa Clause," for one
- Cause of a smile, maybe
- "Queen of denial," e.g.
- What 61-Across contains
- 86-Across, e.g.
- Insignificant
- Bit of wordplay
- It may not have been intended
- "The lowest form of humor," per Samuel Johnson
- Groan trigger
- One of about 3,000 in Shakespeare's plays
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pun \Pun\, v. t. [See Pound to beat.] To pound. [Obs.]
He would pun thee into shivers with his fist.
--Shak.
Pun \Pun\, n. [Cf. Pun to pound, Pound to beat.]
A play on words which have the same sound but different
meanings; an expression in which two different applications
of a word present an odd or ludicrous idea; a kind of quibble
or equivocation.
--Addison.
A better put on this word was made on the Beggar's
Opera, which, it was said, made Gay rich, and Rich gay.
--Walpole.
Pun \Pun\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Punned; p. pr. & vb. n.
Punning.]
To make puns, or a pun; to use a word in a double sense,
especially when the contrast of ideas is ludicrous; to play
upon words; to quibble.
--Dryden.
Pun \Pun\, v. t.
To persuade or affect by a pun.
--Addison.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1660s (first attested in Dryden), of uncertain origin, perhaps from pundigron, which is perhaps a humorous alteration of Italian puntiglio "equivocation, trivial objection," diminutive of Latin punctum "point." This is pure speculation. The verb also is attested from 1660s. Related: Punned; punning.\n\nPun was prob. one of the clipped words, such as cit, mob, nob, snob, which came into fashionable slang at or after the Restoration.
[OED]
Wiktionary
Etymology 1 vb. (context transitive English) To beat; strike with force; ram; pound, as in a mortar; reduce to powder. Etymology 2
n. A joke or type of wordplay in which similar senses or sounds of two words or phrases, or different senses of the same word, are deliberately confused. vb. To make or tell a pun; make a play on words.
WordNet
n. a humorous play on words; "I do it for the pun of it"; "his constant punning irritated her" [syn: punning, wordplay, paronomasia]
Wikipedia
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play that suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or figurative language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism is an incorrect variation on a correct expression, while a pun involves expressions with multiple correct interpretations. Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, as their usage and meaning are specific to a particular language and its culture.
Puns have a long history in human writing. Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs were originally based on punning systems, and the Roman playwright Plautus was famous for his puns and word games. Punning has been credited as the fundamental concept behind alphabets, writing, and even human civilization.
Pun may refer to:
- Pun, a figure of speech that plays on words that are similar to each other
- Pan (surname) (also spelt Pun or Poon), a Chinese surname
- PunBB, an internet discussion board system, originally known as Pun
- a tool used to tamp down clay: see puddling (engineering)
- Big Pun, a rapper
- Type punning, a computer programming technique
Usage examples of "pun".
He would have to remember the pun to tell Alec Diger later, if there was a later.
Richmond, and she imagines the legions the place must harbor just below the historical surface, and laughs out loud, I think, as her punning answer occurs to her, with the added bonus of a message in it for me.
He named one of the sauciest of the old-time nautches, and smiled at his own pun.
Wally beta-tested a new pun he was working up, to the effect that if the promised paperless digital world ever materialized, writers would all be The Artists Formerly Known In Prints.
The air is full of real and false sweetmeats, pamphlets, pasquinades, and puns.
Certainly if Banville were to lay claim to having invented rhymes that are puns, we could only say that he was a plagiarist after reading Charles Poncy.
They were also riping people for the dangerous jobs, the jobs nobody in their right minds would take, pun intended.
He and I were once forcibly ejected from a Halifax restaurant called Chicken Tandoor for persistent punning.
Togarmi, Abulafia freely sprinkled his texts with codes, acrostics, and number-letter puns to simultaneously befuddle his persecutors and communicate freely with knowledgeable Spanish mystics like Joseph Gikatilia, a respected member of his circle.
The thrill of finding an allusion, of locating the precise source of a teasing echo, of suddenly catching an obscure pun or seeing what should have been an obvious joke makes the reader alert, curious, eager to find new puzzles to solve.
Those spineless types who talk about abolishing the apostrophe are missing the point, and the pun is very much intended.
Gobei laughed in delight at his own pun on the words for soup stock made of dried bonito and the word for soldier.
Hertz had suddenly remembered having seen Punning Parker in Havana a number of times recently, and the word had gotten around that Punning Parker was a bad but clever one.
But Punning Parker had just raked his chestnuts out of the fire by that dive under the keel.
Hertz purloined those ideas as his own, Punning did not say anything about it.