Pun

“ But the pun may contain a very high form of wit, and may please either for its cleverness, or for its amusing quality, or for the combination of the two. Naturally, the really excellent pun has always been in favor with the wits of all countries. Johnson's saying, that a man who would make a pun would pick a pocket, is not to be taken too seriously. ”

“ I complimented 'em in a newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the 'Addresses' over and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good, and better, than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a noble thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for Reflection (vide my 'Aids' to that recessment from a savage state) —it is entire, it fills the mind; it is perfect as a sonnet, better. ”

“ All bright and clever minds have seen the possibilities of the pun, and so common is it as an impromptu form of wit among keen people, so general the temptation to fall into it, that it is looked upon with disfavor, as a pitfall for thought, [Pg viii] which often prevents it from finishing its course.
The conundrum has, however, an ancient and honorable lineage, and, while not often given its precise form in conversation or anecdote, is readily adapted to the permanent embodiment of those flashes of wit which enlighten and cheer. ”

“ We are strongly of opinion that there can be no greater pest to society than the inveterate and professional punster—a man who sets traps for you, who lies in wait for every phrase you utter, to twist and turn it into a meaning of his own, and who is continually stopping the natural flow of discourse, and bringing it to [95] some ‘lame and impotent conclusion.’ But, as we have endeavoured to show, the pun, when ‘telling’ and well-applied, is as legitimate a form of wit as any other, and quite as conducive to good feeling and good fellowship. ”

“ Or let us take another group: the relish for word-play and the lighter kinds of wit. Here, again, I concede to Bain that the taking down of something a good peg-interval intensifies our satisfaction: but it seems impossible to maintain that our mirth depends altogether on the recognition of this. A good pun, a skilful turning of words so as to give a new and startlingly disconnected meaning, can hardly be said to owe its instant capture of our laughing muscles to our perception of a degradation of language and the habits of serious speech. ”

“ If a man puns upon a stable, you may pun upon a cornfield, a meadow, a horse-park, a smith's or sadler's shop; ex. gr. One says, His horses are gone to rack.' Then you answer, 'I would turn out the rascal that looks after them. Hay, sir, don't you think I am right? I would strike while the iron is hot; and pummel the dog to some purpose.' [Pg 53]
R. 15. The Rule of Alienation; which obliges you, when people are disputing hotly upon a subject, to pitch upon that word which gives the greatest disturbance, and make a pun upon it. ”

“ For of all dreary and lugubrious perpetrations in print, nothing can be more desolate than laboured witticism. A pun is a momentary spark dropt upon the tinder-box of social intercourse; and to detach such a sentence from its producing circumstances, is about as efficacious a method of producing laughter, as the scintillatory flint and steel struck upon wet grass would be of generating light. Few things are less digestible than abortive efforts at the humorous; the stream of conversation instantly freezes up ”

“ Though looked upon by the purist as a contemptible figure in literature, the pun proved in his hands a source of genuine humour, and sometimes of deepest pathos. It is a received axiom, that a keen perception of the ridiculous is a conclusive proof of real genius ”

“ The pun is the dung of the mind which soars. The jest falls, no matter where; and the mind after producing a piece of stupidity plunges into the azure depths. ”

“ To complete our theory it remains for us to mention a spurious kind of wit, the play upon words, the calembourg, the pun, to which may be added the equivocation, the double entendre, the chief use of which is the expression of what is obscene. Just as the witticism brings two very different real objects under one concept, the pun brings two different concepts, by the assistance of accident, under one word. ”

“ If a pun is good, the pleasure is sometimes purely mental and scarcely gets beyond a smile; for it constrains two different ideas into an accidental relation [Pg 18] with one word, and the clever feat surprises us. We are not looking for it, as our life is plain-spoken, does not twist its intention nor its language, and passes for what it is. ”

“ But always in an enquiring mind there was the insistent WHY? which is a characteristic and a glory of man as a reasoning animal, and hence often a meaning was given to a word that is simply a sort of pun, an endeavour to explain a word by what it looks like in current speech or dialect when there was not the knowledge of earlier times and older tongues which elevates mere guessing into the science of etymology. ”

“ They are neighborly, naive, humorous and philosophic in their regular characteristics, and often use rhyme, sometimes satire, frequently in palatable doses the propaganda of reform, and the pun remains in them a respectable ingredient. ”

“ For a true pun always has a humorous idea behind the verbal quip that is its prominent characteristic. And though the verbal quip may be 'old as the hills,' the joke may present a face fresh as that of a young maiden and bear a meaning merry as her eyes. ”

“ The Etymological Rule is, when a man hunts a pun through every letter and syllable of a word: as for example, I am asked, 'What is the best word to spend an evening with?' I answered, 'Potatos; for there is po—pot—pota—potat—potato, and the reverse sot-a-top.'
R. 26. The Rule of Mortification is, when a man having got the thanks and laugh of a company for a good pun, an enemy to the art swears he read it in "Cambridge Jests." ”

“ A pun that claims any intellectual rank must have a point, a bite, and this would appear to be most naturally secured by introducing an element of irony and rendering the primary and obvious meaning of the sentence ludicrously false. ”

“ R. 6. The Rule of Pun upon Pun. All puns made upon the word pun are to be esteemed as so much old gold. Ex. gr. suppose two famous punsters should contend for the superiority, and a man should wittily say, 'That is a Carthaginian war:'
Q. How, sir?
A. Why, sir, it is a Pun-ick war.
R. 7. The Socratic Rule is, to instruct others by way of question and answer. ”

“ While the conundrum ranks as the formal literary representative of the spontaneous pun, the literature of wit is alive with the naked pun in its original state. Pope, Hood, Lamb, and Holmes are the names of some whose punning arraignments of puns and punsters make them at once judges and prisoners at the bar.
Theodore Hook is accredited with the original pun which is the basis of a common conundrum. He bragged that he could make a pun on any subject, and immediately a friend suggested that he make one on the King. "The King is no subject," was the prompt rejoinder. ”

“ The Rule of Inoculating is, when a person makes an excellent pun, and you immediately fix another upon it; as Dean Swift one day said to a gentleman, who had a very little bob wig, 'Sir, the dam of your wig is a whisker;' upon which I came in very à propos, and said, 'Sir, that cannot be, for it is but an ear-wig.'
R. 23. The Rule of Desertion allows you to bring a man into a pun, and leave him to work it out: as, suppose you should hear a man say the [Pg 57] word incomparable——Then you proceed, in-com-incom-par-par-rable-rable——So let the other make his best of it. ”

“ Represent a grave and rather anti-pun-like looking person, turning over the leaves of a pronouncing dictionary, and endeavouring to extract a pun from some obstinate and intractable word, that everybody else had discovered and abandoned years ago. ”

“ I don't know of any very bad men who make puns, but I have known of many good men who make bad puns. It is not an avaricious state of the mind, for who ever heard of "puns for sale or manufactured to order," or of a man getting rich in the wholesale or retail pun trade!
In fact, a pun is like an egg—the moment you crack it the meat is out. Some men carry things to extremes ”

“ A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect. ”

“ Perhaps, dear sir, you'll think it cruel
To feed them on plain water-gruel;
But take my word, the best of breeding!
As it is plain, requires plain feeding.
Vide Roscommon.
[Pg 51]
R. 11. The Rule of Repetition: You must never let a pun be lost, but repeat and comment upon it till every one in the company both hears and understands it; ex. gr. Sir, I have good wine to give you; excellent pontack, which I got 'pon tick; but, sir, we must have a little pun-talk over it; you take me, sir, and you, and you too, madam.—There is pun-talk upon pontack, and 'pon tick too, hey. ”

“ But in English use the pun has fallen into disrepute, perhaps from the execrable word-contortions of our so-called comic papers and its terrible vulgarity in stage burlesques, the intrusion of one is fatal to the delicacy and refinement which are the peculiar charm of the rondeau. But if a play upon words of a scholarly kind, or a new reading given either [Pg lxii] by punctuation, or the use of the words with a new light thrown on them by the lines leading up to the refrain, can be secured, every effort should be made to vary the refrain by so doing. ”

“ Any person may pun upon another man's puns about half an hour after he has made them; as Dr. E—— and Mr. F—— frequently do.
I remember one day I was in company with them, and upon Major G—— saying, 'That he would leave me the gout for a legacy,' I made answer, and told the company,' I should be sorry to have such a leg as he.' They both snapped it up in their turns, and had as much applause for the pun as I had. ”

“ People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism. ”

“ For the dawn of a sense of the merely ridiculous, as in punning and the simplest jokes, shows the same thing as the dawn of aesthetic feeling—surplus mind, something over and above that required for getting food and for mere animal indulgence. All the more so if punning be that out of which wit and humor are evolved. ”

“ Small Wit.
"Many there are (says an old writer) that will lose their friend rather than their jest, or their quibble, pun, punnet or pundigrion, fifteen of which will not make up one single jest." Is there any commentator who can explain the punnet and pundigrion, or must they be enumerated in the next work which shall be written De rebus deperditis? The recovery of this lost species of the small currency of wit, would be of signal advantage to our modern dramatists. ”

“ The Hypothetic Rule is, when you suppose things hardly consistent to be united, for the sake of a pun: as for instance—suppose a person in the pillory had received a full discharge of eggs upon every part of his face but the handle of it; why should he make the longest verses in the world? Ans. Versos Alexandrinos, i. e. All-eggs-and-dry-nose.
R. 30. The Rule of Naturalization is, that punning is free of all languages: as for the Latin Romanos you may say 'Roman nose'—Temeraria, 'Tom, where are you?'—Oxoniæ prospectus, 'Pox on you, pray speak to us. ”

“ For what is there to hinder the mind from gradually acquiring a habit of attending to the lighter relations of ideas in which wit consists? Punning grows upon everybody, and punning is the wit of words. ”

“ Sydney Smith says that it is the foundation of all wit. Supposing three degrees of evolution, I submit that punning is the least evolved system of joking, that wit is evolved out of punning, and that humor is evolved out of wit. ”

“ Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words, which, passing in at the ears, and falling upon the diaphragma, excites a titillary motion in those parts; and this being conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of the heart. ”

“ When a man speaks any thing that comes uppermost, and some good pun-finder discovers what he never meant in it; then he is to say, "You have hit it!" As major ——— did: complaining that he staid at home by reason of an issue in a leg, which was just beginning to run, he was answered by Mr. ——, "I wonder that you should be confined, who have such running legs." The Major replied, "You have hit it; for I meant that."
R. 32. The Rule of Scandal. Never to speak well of another Punster; ex. gr. "Who, he! Lord, sir, he has not sense enough to play at crambo;" ”

“ If wit consists principally, as the first of modern philosophers has affirmed, in the unexpected association of ideas apparently far removed in their nature from each other, punning must, in its very essence, claim to rank in the highest class of wit. ”

“ Wit and humour are intellectual, and when genuine are susceptible of being translated into almost all languages; but dialect seems to me to rank with puns, and with puns of a particular local character. ”

“ EVERY MAN HIS OWN PUNSTER,
BEING
RULES FOR PUNNING,
OR
PUNS FOR ALL PERSONS AND SEASONS.
A FRAGMENT.
"Comitantibus armis,
PUNica se—attollet gloria." Virg. Æn. iv.
Prefatory remarks on the art of punning—its antiquity from Homer's outis, through Sophocles, Cicero, &c. down to Shakspeare, &c. Its advantages over wit. Wit requires wit in the hearer to comprehend it—a lasting and insuperable objection to its universality. Puns, on the contrary, require no wit to make them, nor any to understand them. Prove this by their well-known effect on stupidity in drawing-rooms, theatres, &c. ”