No pun, no gain

The sun shines through a punkah of green, tender leaves.

Graham Swift, Ever After

The pun goes by many names – paronomasia, wordplay, equivoque, calembour, double entendre - but the most common is (surprise surprise) pun.

The nurse winked at the doctor, and he intern, cauterise.

If that didn’t catch your eye or your verbal fancy, perhaps you really need to read this article.

The pun winked at the spectator, and he in turn, was galvanised.

To the dispassionate, the serious, or the jocular, to the word-scholar or the unschooled, puns are verbal winks that can set off raucous laughter or mad groaning or sepulchral silence – or a spasm of all three simultaneously, reminding one of an inebriated hyena in mid-orgasm. Stand downwind of a great pun and – whatever your initial reaction - chances are you’ll be back for more. 

Recently plagiarised MSN conversation between two net wayfarers (names changed to protect everything but gender):

Boy says:

hear u've become downwardly immobile, thanks to your new mobile phone

Girl says:

u have heard wrong, it's downwardly mobile

Boy says:

yeah, but u keep saying i'm mobile; therefore, immobile

Girl says:

woteva

Boy says:

wot eva said is none of your business

Girl says:

that i suspected for a while

 Boy says:

your suspicion is suspect

Girl says:

lol

Boy says:

To wit, wassup wit u

Girl says:

well.....workin hard and playin hard....and u?

Boy says:

all play and no work makes me very punny boy

Girl says:

i noticed

Boy says:

I’m in rehab now, only booze and ciggies; it is a booze for my confidence;

booze is the secret of my energy

Girl says:

what happened to sex

Boy says:

sex is the secret of my synergy

Girl says:

i can imagine…how r things with girlfriend

 Boy says:

Couldn’t be bitter; we meet every day and say 'high'

Girl says:

i figured

Boy says:

figuratively speaking, how?

Girl says:

the two of u have similar tastes

Boy says:

tasting tasting, one two one two

Girl says:

that wld be a biological impossibility

Boy says:

and so are you

(At this point, she sends across a cyber punch that has him a-reeling and no pun can save him.)

Comparable to the aforementioned punkah, the pun is a verbal prism through which a ray of thought is refracted into two or more meanings and showered upon an unsuspecting audience. Unfortunately, the pun, in its present avtaar, is not treated with the reverence it deserves, often maimed and murdered before it is even given a chance to settle into audience minds. “No pun intended,” we mutter archly, turning everyone’s attention to the very pun that we purported not to hype – a manifestation of our God complex as well, as we aspire to that Greek lord of beginnings, Janus, the epitomy of double-facedness.

Or: “Pun intended,” we trumpet, bloated with our own cleverness, not realising, or not wishing to realise the redundancy of our words and therefore of our lives at that very moment. Why not let the pun speak for itself instead of muddling its effect with an allusion to itself and derailing our putative flow of thought? May as well spill this souring habit over (metaphor intended) to other figures of speech, punctuation, (comma intended) not to forget (memorableness intended) expletives and other forms of linguistic subtlety. (Sarcasm intended).

May as well exhaust our rapidly dwindling life hours in the use of insidious tautology; may as well die the same way, resting in pieces of superfluity (epitaph for our race: he/she died as he/she lived – gravely (pun intended by one dead person)). Wouldn’t the world – and the dead man – prefer a better pun, with no unwarranted wastage of gravestone? Example:

Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs
from a .44
no Les
no more

In the absence of such a name, particularity of death and ability to pun, one could say: oh, he’s just gone underground for a while.

A bad pun is an offal thing to contemplate. For every two-bit pun-mauling Ravana, however, there must be a nemesis, a punoRama, the noble protagonist. Wordsmiths like Shakespeare, Boswell and Calverly championed its cause in verb and in tense, intensely, unabashedly.

Today’s proponents include John Crosbie, Richard Lederer, and Norman Gilbert, each one of them spearheading a war against pun-apathy and pun-clumsiness and pun blindness, preserving the art en bon point. As Sir Ernest Gowers, in Fowler's Modern English Usage, puts it, "Puns are good, bad, and indifferent, and only those who lack the wit to make them are unaware of the fact."

An astronaut broke the law of gravity and got a suspended sentence.
 

People who are cavalier with the use of puns, are sentenced, by their own ineptitude, to a life of poorly constructed and shoddily comprehended sentences. He who laughs last, often doesn’t get the pun. What is a pun? In Italian, 'puntiglio' means "a fine point," hence a verbal quibble, and is most likely the source of the English "punctilious."

The pun is defined by Oxford as: “[Origin uncertain: perh. short for the archaic pundigrion, meaning pun, itself perhaps a fanciful alteration of punctilio] The humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings, or of words of similar sound with different meanings; an instance of this; a play on words."

Why do people groan when a pun is told? Several reasons. A bad pun is often too obvious or just extremely puerile. Sometimes, the fact that the pun is no more than clever wordplay - pivoting on the sound or meaning of the word - can turn self-styled intellectuals off, even in the face of a great joke. Pun envy may also be a factor, the "why didn't I think of that?" thought supplanted by a shaky superiority complex. Subtle or blatant racism can exist within groups of punsters, each one claiming a higher pedestal from which to rain punitive puns.

There are different types of puns. Homographic puns make use of multiple meanings from a single spelling (e.g., "pen" for writing instrument or animal enclosure). These are also referred to as "antanaclasis". Homophonic puns use like sounds but with different spellings and meanings. This is also referred to as polyptoton. Examples of homophones are scent and sent, jeans and genes, waive and wave, and buy and bye. All puns are, without exception, homo sapien.

So, in the punset of our years, let us be gentle with the venerable pun. What is it that makes a good pun? The pun must be pantomime – understated, visual – not punishment, loud and vulgar. More recommended ingredients: quick setup (brevity is important), no proper names (listener might not recognize the name), familiar references, a pointed revelation – punchline (you should see the spark in the listeners' eyes as they 'get it') - and finally, maximum wordplay throughout.

Are you pun-hungry, pungry? Slake your appetite with these linguistic new-ances:

It was an emotional wedding. Even the cake was in tiers.
If you don't pay your exorcist you get repossessed.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway).
A lot of money is tainted. It taint yours and it taint mine.
Talking to her about computer hardware I make my mother board.
 Two peanuts were walking in a tough neighbourhood and one of them was a-salted.
A cat ate some cheese and waited for a mouse with baited breath.