Puns Use Key Words

Puns. The lowest kind of wit or more picturesque speech? As you know, I believe they are the latter. Susan recently pointed me in the direction of an NYT article on puns which I'd like to share with you.

The inglorious pun! Dryden called it the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” To Ambrose Bierce it was a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” Universal experience confirms the adage that puns don’t make us laugh, but groan. It is said that Caligula ordered an actor to be roasted alive for a bad pun. (Some believe he was inclined to extremes.)


Addison defined the pun as a “conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in the sound, but differ in the sense.” “Energizer Bunny Arrested! Charged with Battery.” No laugh? Q.E.D. Puns are the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: whatever comic force they possess never outlasts the split second it takes to resolve the semantic confusion. Most resemble mathematical formulas: clever, perhaps, but hardly occasion for knee-slapping. The worst smack of tawdriness, even indecency, which is why puns, like off-color jokes, are often followed by apologies. Odds are that a restaurant with a punning name — Snacks Fifth Avenue, General Custard’s Last Stand — hasn’t acquired its first Michelin star.

You can read the rest here. As Susan points out, "a pun's wit and entertainment is in the very groan that it produces."

My predilection for puns has me and my blog landing into a soup often (pun fully intended), if one were to go by the weird keywords or search phrases that I get. I've left off the usual risque ones so here are a pick of the past few days:

"I was just sitting there, eating my soup"

"Caterpillar in my soup"

"Can turnip greens be used in wedding soup"

"My love is alive summer begins"

"How we came alive"

Keywords Humour Slice of Life