
In Defense of Puns - whatami
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a15872842/in-defense-of-puns/
======
simias
The problem aren't puns per-se, it's when people abuse them without rhyme or
reason to derail a conversation. It gets real boring real quick. It's
especially true on the internet where in my experience it seems that half the
people received a government-mandated "100 puns you are legally obliged to
place once a week in conversations".

I don't have a problem with puns, I have a problem with compulsive,
unimaginative, lazy punning. You know, like replying "I did nazi that coming"
in reply to a comment mentioning the third reich or WW2. Never gets old.

~~~
edem
I don't like you. You need to get punted.

~~~
falsedan
1/6 forced

------
brd529
I entered a pun contest once, much like the one in the video embedded in the
article. I had ten puns prepared, hoping one of them would win.
Unfortunately... no pun in ten did.

~~~
omeid2
Will, that didn't _pan_ out well for you.

~~~
Shikadi
Who is Will?

------
hprotagonist
“being able to make a terrible pun” is my rough metric for real fluency in a
language.

~~~
AKrumbach
Which would be to say for fluency, the proof is in the punning.

------
101km
There is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by the practice of
all ages as that which consists in a jingle of words, and is comprehended
under the general name of punning.

It is indeed impossible to kill a weed which the soil has a natural
disposition to produce. The seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and
though they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be
very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated
by the rules of art. Imitation is natural to us, and when it does not raise
the mind to poetry, painting, music, or other more noble arts, it often breaks
out in puns and quibbles.

..I shall here define it to be a conceit arising from the use of two words
that agree in the sound, but differ in the sense. The only way, therefore, to
try a piece of wit is to translate it into a different language. If it bear
the test, you may pronounce it true; but if it vanish in the experiment you
may conclude it to have been a pun. In short, one may say of a pun, as the
countryman described his nightingale, that it is a " _vox et prczterea nihil_
"–"a sound, and nothing but a sound."

~~~
svat
^ By Joseph Addison, founder of _The Spectator_ (the original one), writing in
1711.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=JEqJpAPC5dsC&pg=PA146](https://books.google.com/books?id=JEqJpAPC5dsC&pg=PA146)

------
FabHK
Non-native speaker here. Could someone explain the currency pun quoted?

> When one guy gestured towards his shirt and declared “I’ll be _washing tons_
> of clothes later,” his opponent instantly responded, “Better get a _tub,
> man.”_

I guess _Washingtons_ is slang for a certain denomination of US dollar bill?
But what on earth is _tub man?_ Thanks!

~~~
subroutine
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman)

I think...

Seems like there was some plan to but Tubman on the US$20

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/tubman-
st...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/tubman-still-part-
of-20-note-redo-as-mnuchin-focuses-elsewhere)

~~~
FabHK
Oh, "On April 20, 2016, then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced plans
to add Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill". Wicked. Thanks a lot!

~~~
mimiflynn
BTW, seems this was put on hold: [http://fortune.com/2018/04/19/harriet-
tubman-20-dollar-bill-...](http://fortune.com/2018/04/19/harriet-
tubman-20-dollar-bill-delayed/)

------
pandler
If anyone is interested in a more in depth and humorous take on puns, I
remember enjoying "The Pun Also Rises" by John Pollack - a book I randomly
picked up a few years back from a Barnes and Nobles.

He explored some of the history of puns and general wordplay, why English is
particularly suited for puns (unlike e.g. Romanian as someone else mentioned
in this thread), how puns fit into modern and past culture (both the positive
and negative bits), as well as some personal anecdotes.

It's a pretty quick and light read, and if you're the type of person that
would actually enjoy reading a whole 150+ pages of book about puns, I'd
definitely recommend it.

------
jcoffland
What makes puns so annoying is the punner expecting to be told how clever they
are.

~~~
pdpi
Eh. I live for the groans.

~~~
maxerickson
Yes, the failure to success scale of puns is measured in anger. A pun so awful
it makes the listener angry is a grand success.

~~~
dvtv75
I once heard someone say that the best puns cause physical pain, either with
the listener groaning or the listener punching, but either way the pain is the
proof of success.

------
heckanoobs
The puns in this thread are a great example of why people hate puns. Also a
lot of them are spoonerisms and not puns, which will get you ejected from a
pun contest

~~~
d0lph
It seems like a spoonerism is unintentional. I feel like a pun for most people
means word play.

Spoonerism. a verbal error in which a speaker accidentally transposes the
initial sounds or letters of two or more words, often to humorous effect, as
in the sentence you have hissed the mystery lectures, accidentally spoken
instead of the intended sentence you have missed the history lectures.

~~~
heckanoobs
Yeah I personally use the concepts interchangeably but if you go to the pun
competitions in the bay area they will disqualify spoonerisms in the general
sense which includes any partial word substitutions like "punderdome"

------
Treblemaker
I found this article [1] to be much more enlightening [2]. The problem is not
so much that puns are bad, but that so many puns are just bad puns.

As described here [3],

> "It's not enough to just substitute a word that sounds the same (aka a
> 'homophone'); for example, which is funnier, 'Be kind to your dentist
> because he has fillings too' or 'She ate my breakfast role'? You probably
> said the first pun, because the meaning of the substitute word also makes
> sense in the context of the sentence, and it’s this second meaning that
> actually makes the joke funny."

[1] [https://slifty.com/2016/03/a-puntitled-framework-for-
evaluat...](https://slifty.com/2016/03/a-puntitled-framework-for-evaluating-
the-quality-of-puns/)

[2] Heh.

[3]
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/06/1...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/06/17/computational-
model-measure-good-bad-puns-really/)

------
greeneggs
Is there a list of punning competitions? I'd like to find one in the Bay Area.

The Punderdome is monthly in Brooklyn, NY. Tonight (May 1) at 7pm.

[https://www.littlefieldnyc.com/event/1620815-punderdome-
broo...](https://www.littlefieldnyc.com/event/1620815-punderdome-brooklyn/)

~~~
shammers
"Orlando Punslingers" is a popular event that happens at SAK Comedy Lab in
Florida every few months.

------
smnscu
Coincidentally, I just watched this (posted 3 days ago):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbWP9nvnRhw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbWP9nvnRhw)

As a non-native speaker I never understood the hate for puns, I've always
found them inoffensive fun.

~~~
yxhuvud
Dont you have puns in your native language?

~~~
smnscu
Nope. Romanian is not a great fit for puns. I think English is a special case,
since the "word density" is so high, due to a huge (largest actually)
vocabulary, and the propensity to use short words, usually with multiple
meanings. Also it's such a foreign thing to do that it'd be really weird to
try, although there are some (very silly) examples (corcodus -> cur cu dus,
furculita -> fur cu lita, etc.).

I'm curious whether there are any other languages that are naturally "punny".

~~~
vram22
>I'm curious whether there are any other languages that are naturally "punny".

I never thought of this before, although I know some Sanskrit (having learned
it for some years in school) - but due to its overall design and the fact that
words can be built up from other words, and also due to many short words
having potentially many meanings (and hence longer words built up from short
words, even more so), I think there is probably a lot of scope in Sanskrit for
punning. Sanskrit poetry probably has a lot of it, but likely prose too. A
very rich and enjoyable language to study, even just for its own sake, i.e.
even if you are not studying it in order to understand Indian philosophies,
yoga, etc.

~~~
svat
Yes, puns are called śleṣa (shlesha, श्लेष) in Sanskrit poetry. (For a bit
more, you can search under those two spellings, make sure to search the first
two pages and also Google Books.)

There are even entire long poems that are a “pun” — they tell two stories,
depending on how you read each verse. Yigal Bronner has written a book about
these:

> Extreme Poetry - The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration (2010)

though the book is a bit lighter on examples and heavier on theorizing (the
price of academia) than I'd like.

~~~
vram22
Interesting, will check that out.

------
Fricken
I've heard many say puns are the lowest form of humour, including a close
friend's mother, but anyone who thinks as much has fixiated on the wrong
thing. It's a classuffocation error, like saying steak is the unhealthiest
type of vegetabull. Puns are like oxygen to me. They are an art. Without that
art I choke. Anyone who tries to gag my puns ought to be trampled by a Belgian
Blue, in the face. I don't know what their beef is, maybe they tried out at a
pun meet, didn't make the cut, and can't shoulder it. Let it go. Take a deep
breath. Become a vegetarian. No need to go through life choking down burnt
rump when you can have a breath of fresh lettuce spun. Let us pun.

~~~
dspillett
_> I've heard many say puns are the lowest form of humour_

Sarcasm is said to be the lowest form of wit. Or are we considering humour and
wit to be independent enough to each have their own league tables in this
respect?

While we are on the subject: A pun is it's own reword.

~~~
adityab
Sarcasm may be the _lowest_ form of wit, but puns sure are the puniest.

------
gaius
It’s not that puns are bad per se, it’s just that people making them tend to
be pompous bores anyway.

------
hellofunk
I was expecting a nice treatise on something like this topic:

[https://lispcast.com/nil-punning/](https://lispcast.com/nil-punning/)

------
vram22
Let's throw all puns in the Punama Canal.

Also: A man! a plan! a canal! Panama!

is a pulindrome.

------
moate
I like puns and rap music. Often Good rap is puns set to a beat.

------
jancsika
People who pun for sport also have a very high probability of having a narrow
view of comedy. It's as if comedy were simply an expression of the wit of the
speaker.

That leaves the audience with little other than the facile verification of the
speaker's wit. Yes, we confirm that word X has a double meaning. The groan is
verbal confirmation that the speaker has essentially wasted their time.

Besides, there are other types of low-hanging comedic fruit-- crowd work,
street jokes, musical parodies-- which don't get groans. Those typically
involve skills other than wit-- like relating to other human beings,
improvisation, vulnerability, etc.-- which I think is the reason why.

------
falsedan
Wow this article is some self-serving tripe.

puns?

1\. most people aren't very funny

2\. some smart people conflate recognising a reference to some external
knowledge with wit

3\. not enough people follow Shakespeare's lead and make lots of puns about
genitals

------
mvindahl
Attila the Pun gave them a bad name

------
Nullfrog
This article should have started with a punographic warning!

