In Defense of Puns

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.

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.

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

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."

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!

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.

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

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

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...

[2] Heh.

[3] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/06/1...

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...

Coincidentally, I just watched this (posted 3 days ago): 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.

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.

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

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

https://lispcast.com/nil-punning/

Let's throw all puns in the Punama Canal.

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

is a pulindrome.

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

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.

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

Attila the Pun gave them a bad name

This article should have started with a punographic warning!