"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... - the first that made a pun at all - Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all - How popular at dinners must ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Ah, you mean that infernal compound which they cover ships' bottoms with? What an atrocious pun!" The man looked puzzled. "Bullen, R.A., great at composition; it sounds well," continued Lightmark gaily, just touching in the brown sail of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... not long since appeared in Punch, to the effect that Pio "No, No," should rather have been named Pio "Yes, Yes," because, as the doctor explained, he granted everything his subjects asked for. Anything like a pun went straight to ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... The pun was new to the Seigneur, and he turned to the Cure chuckling. "Think of that, Cure! He knows the classics." He laughed till the tears ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in vain that he had one, but brought her at last, and while every one else was talking gayly at the feast she was silent. The king observed it and asked her the cause of her silence; and she answered with a pun on her name: "Vineyard I was and Vineyard I am, I was loved and no longer am: I know not for what reason the Vineyard has lost its season." Her husband, who heard this, replied: "Vineyard thou wast and Vineyard thou art, loved thou wast and no longer ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... some aspects of the subject. With children "the habit of rhyming is almost instinctive" and universal. Almost every one can remember some little sing-song or nonsense-verse of his own invention, some rhyming pun, or rhythmic adaptation. The enormous range of variation in the wording of counting-out rhymes, game-songs, and play-verses, is evidence enough of the fertility of invention of child-poets and child-poetesses. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... fate as links me wi' that Post-Office. It was here I began my London life as a porter, and lost my situation because the Postmaster-General couldn't see the propriety of my opening letters that contained coin and postage-stamps and fi'-pun' notes, which was quite unreasonable, for I had a special talent that way, and even the clargy tell us that our talents was given us to be used. It wasn't far from here where I sot my little nephy down, that time I got rid ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... given better witticisms to the jest-books than Sir Thomas More. Like all legal wits, he enjoyed a pun, as Sir Thomas Manners, the mushroom Earl of Rutland discovered, when he winced under the cutting reproof of his insolence, conveyed in the translation of 'Honores mutant mores'—Honors change manners. But though he would condescend to play ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... and deny it who can, Though he 'merrily' liv'd, he is now a 'grave' man; Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun! Who relish'd a joke, and rejoic'd in a pun; 150 Whose temper was generous, open, sincere; A stranger to flatt'ry, a stranger to fear; Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will; Whose daily 'bons mots' half a column might fill; A Scotchman, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... think well of you: you are the bravest, the most modest, and, perhaps, the handsomest man in our corps; but you have not got a single rupee. You ask me for Julia, and you do not possess even an anna!"—(Here the old rogue grinned, as if he had made a capital pun).—"No, no," said he, waxing good-natured; "Gagy, my boy, it is nonsense! Julia, love, retire with your mamma; this silly young gentleman will remain and smoke a pipe ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wit, whenever he could, in the direction of a defence of happier and humaner views. In the long great roll that includes Homer and Shakespeare, he was the last great man who really employed the pun. His puns were not all good (nor were Shakespeare's), but the best of them were a strong and fresh form of art. The pun is said to be a thing of two meanings; but with Hood there were three meanings, for there was also ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... him up to the time of day, and he'll soon be as wide-awake as any on 'em. This morning he brought me a pocket-book, and in it eigh—ty pound flimsies. As he is a young hand, I encouraged him by giving him three pun' ten for the lot—it's runnin' a risk, but I done it. As it is, I shall have to send 'em all over to 'Amburg. Howsomever, he's got to take one pund in home made: bein' out of it myself, I have brought him ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Mr. STANLEY LUPINO bore the brunt, was here and there a little thin, and it is time that somebody let the Management of Drury Lane into the open secret that the pun, as an instrument of mirth, has long been a portion of the dreadful past. Mr. WILL EVANS, as the Baroness Beauxchamps, seldom let himself go, being no doubt held in restraint by a consciousness of his resemblance to Miss ELLEN TERRY. Not enough chance was given ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... proper submission for the fault he had committed, at his own court. His conduct reminds us of Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an ambassador—that he is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. A pun upon the term lieger—ambassador.—B.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... acknowledging that his own reign had received both benefit and glory from it. The people of Alcala punningly said, the church of Toledo had never had a bishop of greater edification than Ximenes; and Erasmus, in a letter to his friend Vergara, perpetrates a Greek pun on the classic name of Alcala, intimating the highest opinion of the state of science there. The reclining statue of Ximenes, beautifully carved in alabaster, now ornaments his sepulchre in the College of ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in saying 'a pun.' But I thought I apprehended a double sense in your application of the term 'Apostolical succession' to Oxford's 'breeding' and 'hatching,' words which imply succession in ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... a broad grin—"Hallo! why, here's a spear that must ha' bin dropt by one o' them savages. That's a piece o' good luck anyhow, as the man said when he fund the fi' pun' note. Now, then, keep an eye on them gals, lad, and I'll be back as soon as ever I can; though I does feel rather stiffish. My old timbers ain't used to such deep ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... ben bin bon bun. Can cen cin con cun. Dan den din don. dun. Fan fen fin fon fun. Guan guen guin guon gun. Han hen hin hon hun. Jan jen jin jon jun. Lan len lin lon lun. Man me min mon mun. Nan nen nin non. nun. Pan pen pin pon pun. Qua quen quin quon qun. Ran ren rin ron run. San sen sin son su. Tan ten tin ton tun. Uan uen. uin uon. uun. Xan xen xin xon xun. Yan yen yin yon yun. ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... sun, And peep at this and that, and hurry yonder, To see some potting properly begun; He strolled to-day, a regular Big Gun, Around the precincts of his bright domain, His egg and toast dispatched. (Forgive the pun, I promise I won't do the same again; Frivolities like these oft run ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... unsolved; but it is believed that Peter was trying to build up the woman's name, Emma, into a pun upon the word "dilemma." The secret, however, is ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... Milton, Chaucer, and Burns had it. Aunt Mary Moody Emerson has it and can write scrap letters. Who has it need never write anything but scraps. Henry Thoreau has it." His humor though a part of this wit is not always as spontaneous, for it is sometimes pun shape (so is Charles Lamb's)—but it is nevertheless a kind that can serenely transport us and which we can enjoy without disturbing our neighbors. If there are those who think him cold-hearted and with but little human sympathy, let them read his letters to Emerson's ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... a single word: Mr. Mix started, and gripped the receiver more tightly. "Nothing!... Why, I don't quite get you on that.... It's an open and shut proposition—No, I most certainly am not trying to make a pun; I'm calling you up in my official capacity. That's the most flagrant, barefaced attempt to evade a law—Why, an idiot could see it! It's to drive the crowd into the Orpheum during ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... Roger was a rare fellow, 'of the driest humour and the nicest tact, of infinite sleights and evasions, of a picked phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry.' He had the mind of a harlequin; his wit was acrobatic, and threw somersaults. He took in a character at a glance, and threw a pun at you as dexterously as a fly-fisher casts his fly over a trout's nose. 'How finely,' says Hazlitt, in his best and heartiest mood; 'how finely, how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the "Southampton!" Poor ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... going to say something right now," she smiled. "Jerry, and Michael, and I. We've been practising it in secret for a surprise for you. You just lie there and listen. It's the Doxology. Don't Laugh. No pun intended." ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... the Subadar-Major, 'you and I grow too old to care for the Kahar-ki-nautch—the Bearer's dance.' He named one of the sauciest of the old-time nautches, and smiled at his own pun. Then he turned to his nephew. 'When I was a lad and came back to my village on leave, I waited the convenient hour, and, the elders giving permission, I spoke of what I had ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Constantino inconstantiam... execrarentur, (Sidonius Apollinaris, l. v. epist. 9, p. 139, edit. secund. Sirmond.) Yet Sidonius might be tempted, by so fair a pun, to stigmatize a prince who had disgraced ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Janson, being at a repast with a celebrated Boileau, had undertaken to pun him upon her name:—"What name, told him, carry you thither? Boileau: I would wish better to call me Drink wine." The poet was answered him in the same tune:—"And you, sir, what name have you choice? Janson: I should prefer ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... my execrable pun. Steele leaned against the counter, his gray glance studying the man I had ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... member a needle and thread, adding the injunction, "Take this and be thrifty." It is said, I know not with what truth, that it is to commemorate the name of the founder, Robert Egglesfield—by the visible pun, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... negress and sometimes supported by canting figures in full. This Mark, with variations, was also employed by Philippe and Guillaume le Noir, the work of the three men covering a period of nearly 100 years. The device of Gilles or Gillet Couteau, Paris, 1492, is apparently a double pun, first on his Christian name, the transition from which to oeillet being easy and explaining the presence of a pink in flower, and secondly on his surname by the three open knives, in one of which the end of the blade is broken. It was almost ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... of unknown origin, probably coined in burlesque imitation of scholastic Latin, as "hocus-pocus" or "panjandrum"), originally a term meaning whim, fancy or ridiculous idea; later applied to a pun or play upon words, and thus, in its usual sense, to a particular form of riddle in which the answer depends on a pun. In a transferred sense the word is also used of any puzzling ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... Associated Words: glossary, glossarist, glossography, glossology, glossologist, lexicology, lexicologist, etymology, etymologist, etymologize, neology, lexicography, terminology, paronomasia, pun, punning, onomatopoeoea, syncope, syncopation, literal, literally, literalism, transliteration, verbal, verbalist, verbalism, battology, logomachy, logomachist, verbarium, apocope, kyriology, metonomy, autonomasia, multiloquence, perissology, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... be more destructive of the higher forms of conversation than a pun? What right has any one to explode a petard in the midst of sweet sociality, and blow every thing like sequence and sentiment sky-high? And therefore, since you, as translator of the Pasha's Letters, have taken pains to publish his observations on many social subjects, I think it ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... laughed the old gentleman. "Didn't mean it for a pun, I hope? Never could endure puns! So you came down yesterday, young gentleman, did you? And where may you ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... her pun, "a thousand times," and she turned without further explanation to the gentleman: "When I tell Mr. Maxwell of this he will suffer as he ought, and that's saying a great deal, for not coming with me to-day. To think ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the peculiar condition of his daughter in relation to the globe on which she dwelt; and requested them to consult together as to what might be the cause and probable cure of her infirmity. The king laid stress upon the word, but failed to discover his own pun. The queen laughed; but Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck heard with humility ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... to say, the tough old knight hath a habit of swearing," said the keeper, grinning at a pun, which has been repeated since his time; "but who can help it? it comes of use and wont. Were you now, in your bodily self, to light suddenly on a Maypole, with all the blithe morris-dancers prancing around it to the merry pipe and tabor, with bells jingling, ribands fluttering, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Alps; who look upon the Lake of Lucerne as one more task ticked off from their memorandum book, and count up the list of summits visible from the Goernergrat without being penetrated with any keen sense of sublimity. And there are mountaineers who are capable of making a pun on the top of Mont Blanc—and capable of nothing more. Still I venture to deny that even punning is incompatible with poetry, or that those who make the pun can have no deeper feeling in their bosoms which they are perhaps too shamefaced ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... for other hours. Some day when you wish a bit of fun with your children you will find humorous poems in many of the books. One is in Volume IV, on page 57. Nearly every stanza contains a "joke": a pun, if you please, usually. Perhaps you and your children will find them all easily, and perhaps you will not. In the last stanza is the "joke" proper, the thing for which the rhymes were written. It is an old joke, surely enough, and you have seen others like it; but ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... turn their backs upon this cold, inhospitable New York and set up their household gods in the "City of Brotherly Love." The city of Penn, he added, was the place for one of his calling—laughing as he spoke, at the feeble pun—but there was new hope and life in the laugh. In Penn's city, even if disappointments should come they would be able to bear them, for how should human beings suffer in the "City ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... word of unknown origin, signifies some question or statement in which some hidden and fanciful resemblance is involved, the answer often depending upon a pun; an enigma is a dark saying; a paradox is a true statement that at first appears absurd or contradictory; a problem is something thrown out for solution; puzzle (from oppose) referred originally to the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... ye late, Macgreegor?' he inquired, with a futile effort to make his good-humoured, whiskered visage assume a stern expression. 'Come, come, oot wi' it! An 'unce o' guid reasons is worth a pun' o' fair apologies.' ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... and see my place, Sheldon," this gentleman had said. "I don't pretend to do the swell thing; but I force my own pines and grow my own grapes, and can put as good a dessert on my table as you could buy in Covent Garden for a five-pun' note. That's my missus's fad, that is, and I can afford it; so why shouldn't I do it? You come and eat your Christmas dinner with us, Sheldon. I've got a friend coming that can sing as good a song as Reeves hisself, and might make a fortune, if he wasn't ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... taste rejected Overtop's pun, but not himself, and she was about to say that she should put him on the list for her next conversazione, when another awkward interruption ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... figure in the story. That is not a pun, if you please. I had no idea that Cheyenne could actually hate any one, until the other night when he told me ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the b—y sans culotte" returned the captain, putting himself in a better humor with his own pun. "But did you see ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Miss Carrington. "An exhibition which will interest the school in general and our parents and friends likewise, meets, I am sure, with the approval of us all. Some of our young ladies, I feel quite sure, show some talent for playing, and much interest therein. Without meaning to pun, I would add that I wish they showed as great talent for work ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... have been preserved, but one is given which shows that she occasionally indulged in a pun. Some one, speaking of a certain bishop who was rather lax in his observance of Lent, said he believed he would eat a horse on Ash-Wednesday. "Very suitable diet," remarked her ladyship, "if it were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Anglicana," Rolls, vol. ii. p. 119. Elsewhere, in another series of unflattering epithets ("old hypocrite," "angel of Satan," &c.), the chronicler had allowed himself the pleasure of making a little pun upon Wyclif's name: "Non nominandus Joannes Wicliffe, vel potius Wykbeleve." Year ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Town-Hall[1] repairs: Where, mindful of the nymph whose wanton eye Transfixed his soul and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping Penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, and with ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... probably of saying something to shock Macready; whose personality could hardly have been sympathetic to him, uttered the remarkable wish that the last breath he drew in might be through a pipe and exhaled in a pun. ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... (which the vulgar pronounce Anas) "al- Wujud"Delight of existing things, of being, of the world. Uns wa jud is the normal punlove-intimacy and liberality; and the caranomasia (which cannot well be rendered in English) re-appears again and again. The story is throughout one of love; hence the quantity ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... injure themselves. Even when a jest misses fire completely, so that it is no jest at all, but only a jocular intention, they laugh just as heartily. Leave out the point of your story, get the word wrong on the duplicity of which the pun that was to excite hilarity depended, and they still honor your abortive attempt with the most lusty ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... does a chicken cross the road?" to which most people give the answer, "To get to the other side;" though the correct reply is, "To worry the chauffeur." It has degenerated into the conundrum, which is usually based on a mere pun. For example, we have been asked from our infancy, "When is a door not a door?" and here again the answer usually furnished ("When it is a-jar") is not the correct one. It should be, "When it is a ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... smiling over at his chum, and ready for his pun, even under such circumstances, "my head is feeling a 'trifle heavy,' but I'm game to stand ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... "Once pun er time there was er bad little girl, an' she wouldn't min' nobody, nor do no way nobody wanted her to; and when her mother went ter give her fyssick, you jes ought ter seen her cuttin' up! she skweeled, an' she holler'd, an' she kicked, an' she jes done ev'y bad way she could; ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... he was a sharp business man, and he knew the ring of truth when he heard it. His hand was bandaged, and three minutes before he would have been glad to sell the 'mangy old monkey' for ten shillings. Now—'Ho! 'e does, does 'e,' he said, 'then two pun ten's my price. He's not got his fellow that monkey ain't, nor yet his match, not this side of the equator, which he comes from. And the only one ever seen in London. Ought to be in the Zoo. Two pun ten, down on the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... disposition. He was a great laugher, but never at any recent merriment. It took a long while for him to understand a joke. Indeed, if it were subtle or elaborate, he never understood it. But give the doctor, when in good health, a plain pun or repartee, and let him have a day or two to think over it, and he would come in with uproarious merriment that well-nigh would choke him to death, if the paroxysm happened to take him with his mouth ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... heart. His features could not laugh, but his trachea did. The chuckle rose no higher than the rings of the wind-pipe, and then it was vigorously thrust back again by the impulse of gravity into the region of his heart, and gladdened it with hidden mirth in its dark centre. The Dominie loved a pun; whether it was let off in English, Greek, or Latin. The last two were made by nobody but himself, and not being understood, were, of course, relished by himself alone. But his love of a pun was a serious attachment: he loved it with a solemn affection—with him it ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... from the fact that they were quite utterly gone. A thorough scrutiny of my surroundings, which I conducted with the aid of my late sleeping companion, merely served to confirm this belief, the search being bootless. I have no intention of making a pun here. Puns are to me vulgar, and hence odious. I mean bootless in the ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... celebrated by Lord Rochester as the AEsopus of the stage; Nat Lee delighted in his acting, exclaiming: "O Mohun, Mohun, thou little man of mettle, if I should write a hundred plays, I'd write one for thy mouth!" And King Charles ventured to pun upon his name as badly as even a king might when he said of some representation: "Mohun (pronounce Moon) shone like a sun; Hart like the moon!" Charles Hart, the Cassio of the Vere Street Theatre, could ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... come to see me sometimes?" the daughter and granddaughter was saying sweetly. "I think you will have to come now, for this was a party, and a party calls for a party-call. Oh, can you make as clever a pun ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... He "will make a Star Chamber matter of it" that Sir John Falstaff has "defied my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge." He bears on his "old coat" (of arms) a "dozen white luces" (small fishes), and there is a lot of chatter about "quartering" this coat, which is without point unless a pun is intended. {8} Now "three luces Hauriant argent" were the arms of the Charlecote Lucys, it is certain. There is some reason then, for connecting Shallow with Sir Thomas Lucy, and an apparent basis for ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... broke down under the opposition of the nobility. Then Calonne volunteered, witty and reckless, and convoked the notables, or not-ables, as Lafayette called them in one of his American letters, borrowing a bad pun from Thomas Paine. Calonne could do nothing with the notables, who obstinately refused to submit to taxation. Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, took his place. This was in April, 1787, a month before Paine's arrival in France. The notables suddenly became manageable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... "I desired very much to come down to the boat and obtain a draught of cold water. I didn't expect to obtain a draft on a gold bank then—ha, ha! you see? Not bad—eh? Even a gentleman can't help making a pun ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... illustrations from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton, Puritan, writers, Congreve, Cowper, and others, until he concluded with Hood, who he declared had first unfolded to the human mind the possibility of the pun. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... conspiracy of silence which withheld from the world Teresa's full name. Cascales y Muoz has since thrown more light upon this episode. But these gentlemen have done nothing more than to tell an open secret. Escosura, long ago, all but betrayed it in the following pun: "Tendamos el velo de olvido sobre esa lamentable flaqueza de un gran corazn," he says, referring to the affair with Teresa, "y recordemos, de paso, que el sol mismo, ese astro de luz soberano, tan sublimemente cantado por nuestro ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... were obliged to keep up a sickly intercourse, not intending a pun. They were too often called in to consult together, to maintain an open war. While the heads of their respective families occasionally met, therefore, at the bed-side of their patients, the families themselves had no direct communications. It is true, that Mrs. Woolston ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... writer, dry; those who knew his writings will feel that he seldom could have taken in a joke or issued a pun. Maseres was the fourth wrangler of 1752, and first Chancellor's medallist (or highest in classics); his second was Porteus[459] (afterward Bishop of London). Waring[460] came five years after him: he could not get Maseres through the second page of his first book ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... to the dialogue. For blacksmiths and teamsters do not trip in their speech; it is a shower of bullets. It is Cambridge men who correct themselves, and begin again at every half-sentence, and, moreover, will pun, and refine too much, and swerve from the matter to the expression. Montaigne talks with shrewdness, knows the world, and books, and himself, and uses the positive degree; never shrieks, or protests, or prays; ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... others volunteered sketches of Calcraft's life. One man boasted that he had taken a pot of beer with him, and another added that the hangman's children and his own went to school together. "He pockets," said the man, "two-pun ten for every one he drops, besides his travelling expenses, and he has put away three hundred and twenty folks. He is a clever fellow, is Calcraft, and he is going to ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... male Forey allied the System and the cake in a miserable pun. Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the table silent, as if he were going to speak; but he said nothing, and the young gentleman vanished from the conversation in a blush, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reason I should always think I was preparing for the small-pox. My notion is quite of another nature; the first thing I do is to have a good fire; for what I say is this, if a man is cold in his fingers, it's odds if ever he gets warm in his purse! ha! ha! warm, you take me, Sir? I mean a pun. Though I ought to ask pardon, for I suppose the young lady don't know what ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... friends! how often, in our social talk, Have we called up these names of spell-like power, As, arm in arm, we took the friendly walk, Or lingered out the evening's parting hour— Or met at the debate, with joyous zest, To test our strength, and each to do his best; While pun and prank we gaily gave and took, With friendship in each heart ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... replied, too earnest to notice Stalky's atrocious pun. "If a slaver runs slaves through British territory he ought to pretend that they're his servants. Hawkin' 'em about in the Fork—the forked stick that you put round their necks, you know—is insolence—same as not backing your ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... alluding to Vladimir of the fourth grade, and was already imagining how he would tell everywhere the story of this pun, so happy in its readiness and audacity, and he wanted to say something equally happy, but His Excellency was buried again in his newspaper, and ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... said, 'when I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin' to go weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten shilling a pun'. Us had it when us were sick—which wasna' often. We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again wi' ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... about, I hoped it wuz religion, but felt dubersome, and hurried there fast as I could. I crossed the automobile track where crowded cars wuz runnin' all the while round and round, past the rows of big high headed mettlesome hosses (this is a pun; ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... they 'eard Ted Reddish and 'is wife coming back. They came in, sat down agin, and after Ted 'ad 'ad another good look at the wild man and prodded 'im all over an' looked at 'is teeth, he spoke up and said they'd decided to give a 'undered pun for 'im at the end o' three days if ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... of writing that Mr Burn was burning with ardour. I see it written—it is something worse than a pun—therefore, per omnes modos et casus—heretical and damnable—consequently I beg the reader to consign it to the oblivion with which we cover our bad actions, and read thus:—The gunner was burning with impatience to show the captain what a valuable ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... make the best of your way out, with no preparation at all; whereupon you infallibly put your foot (and half your leg) into a river, really that, of rainwater—that's a Bora (and that comment of yours, a justifiable pun!) Such things you get in Italy, but better, better, the best of all things you do not (I do not) get those. And I shall see you on Wednesday, please remember, and bring you the rest of the poem—that you should like ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... lieutenant-governorship, of course. Davis ought to be attorney-general, but he'll be beaten by Wray. It's the party reward. Davis is the better lawyer, by long odds, but Wray has stuck to the party like a burr—I don't mean a pun, if ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... The pun is in "Khattiyah" which may mean a writer (feminine) and also a spear, from Khatt Hajar, a tract in the province Al-Bahrayn (Persian Gulf), and Oman, where the best Indian bamboos were landed and fashioned into lances. Imr al-Keys (Mu'allakah v. 4.) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... obliged to consider himself outraged.... Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department.... No circumstance, however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the admission of that last and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the pun. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... suggested that the names of our heroes have given rise to the proverbial saying: "A miss (Amis) is as good as a mile (Amile)," but notwithstanding the high authority from which the suggestion emanates, it is little more than a pun. ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... all these puns; the gentlemen will hate me; I must learn to ignore their conundrums until they answer them themselves, and to wait patiently for the pun instead of catching it and laughing before it is half-spoken. Why can't I do as the others do? There was Mr. Van Ingen with his constant stream of them, that I anticipated several times. He said to me, "If I were ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... myself to another pretty woodpath, which only wants widening to be quite charming. At the end of this, however, I found swamp the second, and out of this having been helped by a grinning facetious personage, most appropriately named Pun, I returned home in dudgeon, in spite of what dear Miss M—— calls the 'moral suitability' of finding a foul bog at the end of every charming wood path or ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... good-sized hotel," said the Don. "Then," he continued, "there's Bedford ditto again—septennel would do for that; then comes Northampton—they don't want no law there at all." (I leave the obvious pun to anyone who likes to make it). "Then Okeham again—did you ever hear of anyone who came from Okeham? I ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... but you will have pity on the ignorance of one who is so new to the profession. As I have intimated, I am no more than an unworthy barrister, in the service of his Majesty, expressly sent from home on a particular errand. It it were not a pitiful pun, I might add, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Shakespeare seldom if ever brings in a person merely for the sake of others. A mixture of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in self, he is by no means a commonplace buffoon, but stands firm in his sufficiency of original stock. His elaborate nonsense, his grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if he did, is both ludicrous and natural. His jokes to be sure are mostly failures; nevertheless they are laughable, because he dreams not but they succeed. The poverty of his wit is thus enriched by his complacency in dealing it ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... graced the dialogue incessantly; but the amazed audience could not indorse this rural festival. Jinny, amid the pigs, horses, tea, cucumbers and marmalade, talked in Mr. Zangwill's best style—a style replete with wordplay or pun—but her setting killed her, and she was ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... thereby. He manufactured a mourning snuff-box, of black shagreen, whose lid was ornamented with a portrait of the queen. He called his boxes "La consolation, dans le chagrin,"[Footnote: "Mbmoires de Madame de Campan" vol. i., p. 91.] and his portrait and pun became so popular, that in less than a week he had sold a hundred thousand of these boxes.[Footnote: This word "chagrin," signifies not only grief, but also that preparation of leather, which, in English, is called "shagreen." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... about it, and said "as 'ow 'e'd 'ave a 'eavy 'eart for hever and hever, hamen," after he was gone. O'Riley remarked, in reference to his departure, that every man in the ship was about to lose a son! Yes, indeed he did; he perpetrated that atrocious pun, and wasn't a bit ashamed of it. O'Riley had perpetrated many a worse pun than that before; it's to be hoped for the credit of his country he has perpetrated a few ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... pleasingly. M. Langles admires and speaks our language. "Your charming Wilkie (says he) pleases me more and more. Why does he not visit us? He will at least find here some good proofs of my respect for his talents." Of course he could not mean to pun. I was then told to admire his impression of Woollett's Battle of La Hogue; and indeed I must allow that it is one of the very best which I have seen. He who possesses that, need not distress himself about any of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and my great- grandfather were both living then, and both held the first royal rank among the Ottawas. My grandfather was then a sub-chief and my great- grandfather was a war chief, whose name was Pun-go-wish: And several other chiefs of the tribe I could mention who existed at that time, but this is ample evidence that the historian was mistaken in asserting that there was no known Ottawa chief existing at the time ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... pun, bad, good, or indifferent, was let slip, however much taking it up might interrupt the subject ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... "What's twenty-five pun'?" he reflected. "There'll be no luggage for her at Edinburgh; that steamer'll go without her; and then I shall give in. I shall talk to her about the ways o' Providence, and tell her it's borne in upon me as she ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... with all her heart. He never teased her as Jem and Shirley did. He never called her "Spider." His pet name for her was "Rilla-my-Rilla"—a little pun on her real name, Marilla. She had been named after Aunt Marilla of Green Gables, but Aunt Marilla had died before Rilla was old enough to know her very well, and Rilla detested the name as being horribly old-fashioned and prim. Why couldn't ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "the Jews have been opposed not only to Rome but to the rest of humanity." Even Julian the Apostate, who designed to rebuild their Temple, raged at the doctrine of their election. Sinai, said the Rabbis with a characteristic pun, ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... important restrictions: In accordance with Statutes of 1883, Chapter 268, any officer, agent, or servant of any corporation or association, who confers, or authorizes [15] to be conferred, any diploma or degree, shall be pun- ished by a fine not less than five hundred dollars and not more ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... me,' said a lady, 'how this creature teases me!' I took it up and put it into my breast-pocket. Mr Wells said, 'That is a pretty nosegay.'—'Yes,' said I, 'it is a dog-rose.' Wilkie's attention, sitting opposite, was called to his friend's pun, but all in vain. He could not be persuaded to see anything in it. I recollect trying once to explain to him, with the same want of success, Hogarth's joke in putting the sign of the woman without a head ('The Good Woman') under ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... you thought her name wasn't Dierdre! It is, because she took it. She takes a lot of things, when I've showed her how. For instance, photographs. She has several snapshots of Jim Beckett and me together. I have some of him and her. They're pretty strong cards (I don't mean a pun!) if we decide to ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with its memory of Saturn's golden days, was named [Greek]. The sickle of Cronus, the sickle of harvest-time, works in well with this explanation, and we have a kind of pun in Homer which points in the direction of ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... interrupted the Baron; "as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress, because he could not pay her bill. Hewas the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot; at whose representation the great pun was made;—I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing the line, 'L'amour a vaincu Loth,' (vingt culottes,) a voice from the pit cried out, 'Qu'il en ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sometimes means the Key. Our Author in this Section is fond of a Pun, which cannot well be translated. Tono is sometimes writ Tuono and Tuono signifies Thunder; therefore the Ignorant answers, he knows no other Tuono but that ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... from personal feeling, and with deference to those better able to form an opinion upon the subject;) but it is impossible to hear the unharmonious crash which proceeds from the orchestra of the opera, without immediately recollecting the celebrated pun of Rosseau: "Pour l'Academie de musique, certainement il fait le plus du bruit du monde." On the other hand, it is amongst the peasantry alone that you now find the ancient music of France. Those airs which are so deeply associated with all the glory and gallantry of the old ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Sicily. There is a pun on the name Gela and 'ridiculous' which it is impossible to keep in English. Apparently the Athenians had sent embassies to all parts of the Greek world to arrange treaties of alliance in view of the struggle with the Lacedaemonians; ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... reply. 'But you needn't be afraid; if we have a shed like a whitewashed barn for the first ten years, with seats of half-hewn logs, we may deem ourselves fortunate, and never aspire to the spire. Excuse my pun.' ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... ladyship,' says he, 'is mistress of all sorts of spells.' But this was Dr. Swift's pun, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... a pun-ish-ment. But the master told him he was pleased to find that he liked to read such good books. He told him not to read them ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... Dame Quickly's pun gives us our Carrot, a plant which, originally derived from our wild Carrot (Daucus Carota), was introduced as a useful vegetable by the Flemings in the time of Elizabeth, and has probably been very little altered or improved since the time of its introduction. In Shakespeare's time ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Cuthbert was now wearing! It would take more than the friendship of a Benjamin Wade, powerful though that was, to salvage Old Nat. That nanny-whiskered old galoot was sunk in too many fathoms of water ever to wade ashore. (He smiled at his poor pun.) The missing power-of-attorney that had scuttled the Lawson supporters would continue missing for all time to come. Mr. J. Cuthbert Nickleby, the then genial secretary, had seen to that once for all; in fact, ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... shot," said Dick; "we'll toe him along at the end of a lariat if he does, that's all." He grinned feebly as he got off this atrocious pun, but Bert and Tom refused ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... vigour of intellect than the present, in which a dread of being thought pedantic dispirits and flattens the energies of original minds. But independently of this, I have no hesitation in saying that a pun, if it be congruous with the feeling of the scene, is not only allowable in the dramatic dialogue, but oftentimes one of the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... means 'Diana's Grove.' Then the next one higher than it, but just beyond it, is called 'Mercy'—in all probability a corruption or familiarisation of the word Mercia, with a Roman pun included. We learn from early manuscripts that the place was called Vilula Misericordiae. It was originally a nunnery, founded by Queen Bertha, but done away with by King Penda, the reactionary to Paganism after St. Augustine. Then comes ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... pun, the amiable clergyman retired, unconscious, I presume, of his prosaic effect upon the atmosphere of the region. With this intrusion of the commonplace, I suffered an eclipse of faith as to Evangeline, and was not sorry to have my attention taken up by the river Avon, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... safely be left quite to himself, unless he is a stranger. As drawing out the people by whom one finds one's self surrounded in society will be treated in a forthcoming essay, I shall not deal with it here further than to tell how a famous pun of Charles Lamb's gave a thoughtful host not only the means of swaying the conversation of the entire table to a subject of universal interest, but as well the means of drawing out a well-informed yet timid girl. ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... so much more likely to commit a robbery than Christians, they being all Gentiles—Pagans—Heathen dogs. What do I infer from this? Why, that upon any solution of the case, hardly one worthy saying can be mentioned, hardly one jest, pun, or sarcasm, which has not been the occasion and subject of many falsehoods—as having been au-(and men)-daciously transferred from generation to generation, sworn to in every age as this man's property, or that man's, by people that must have known ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... [Footnote 33: The pun on "cant" and "recant" was not original, though Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Townshend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When she was asked if ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... with the accent of a man who had recovered his empire, "Come to yourselves. This pun which has fallen from the skies must not be received with too much stupor. Everything which falls in that way is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. 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 ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and silently given, I often catch myself endeavouring to sport a bad pun, when I have got the ear of a fair damsel] The only effect which the witticism produced in the present instance, however, was an enormous groan, in which the fellows on the dickey participated. Even the postilion who stood near, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... supper to her proposed husband, "as is lovely and cheap. One of them suburbs on the line to Essex, where my pretty will live when her husband's frantic par makes it up. Jubileetown's the place, and Victoria Avenue the street. The sweetest cottage at twenty pun' a year as I ever set eyes on. And m'sister as is married to a bricklayer is near to help ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... Steve. Jack's no ordinary rip-roaring, hell-raisin' miner. He knows what's what. That's why we call him Crumbs—because he's fine bred. Pun, ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... curiosity, or who examine and unfold the intricacies of sciences at home, are led by novelty; which not only supplies ornament to beauty or to grandeur, but adds agreeable surprise to the point of the epigram, and to the double meaning of the pun, and is courted ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... by the mediaeval jurists and the school of Dante. Seated on thrones, they are ready to rise in defence of Holy Church, symbolised by a picture of S. Maria del Fiore. At their feet the black and white hounds of the Dominican order—Domini canes, according to the monkish pun—are hunting heretical wolves. Opposite this painting is the apotheosis of S. Thomas Aquinas. Beneath the footstool of this "dumb ox of Sicily," as he was called, grovel the heresiarchs—Arius, Sabellius, Averroes. At again ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... machine which are double, and perfectly corresponding to each other. The projections at the throat-end of a gaff which embrace the mast are termed jaws. Also, the sides of a gun-carriage. (See BRACKETS.) Also, the sides of a block. Also, an old soubriquet for a marine, derived from a rough pun on ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... that we have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents acquainted ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... of dead roses, a glance at a pun, A toss of old powder, a glint of the sun, They meet in the volume that Dobson ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... your thousand dens, Great souls with fewer pence than pens, Sublime adorers of Apollo, With folios full, and purses hollow; Whose very souls with rapture glisten, When you can find a fool to listen; Who, if a debt were paid by pun, Would never be completely done. Ye bright inhabitants of garrets, Whose dreams are rich in ports and clarets, Who, in your lofty paradise, See aldermanic banquets rise— And though the duns around you troop, Still float in seas of turtle soup. I here forsake the tuneful trade, Where none but ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... to retire to France, he knew no French; and having obtained a Grammar for the purposes of study, our friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress Brummell had made in French ... he responded, 'that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the Elements.' I have put this pun into Beppo, which is 'a fair exchange and no robbery;' for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners (as he owned himself), by repeating occasionally, as his own, some of the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in the Morning."—Detached Thoughts, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... you!" said Timon; but Apemantus stayed a while longer and told him he had a passion for extremes, which was true. Apemantus even made a pun, but there was no good laughter to ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... going begging—grovelling for something which the other party has not got to give; if groundless, is it not a fulfilling of the homely old saw relating to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face? (We disclaim any intent to pun.) In either case it is such a full and whole-souled giving of himself, or herself, away on the part of the patient; while on that of its object—is ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... A.M. thermometer 68 deg.. The mosquitoes were most tormenting; as was well expressed by one of the men outside my tent, who remarked to his companion, "That the more you punishes 'em, the more they brings you to the scratch:" a tolerable pun for one of "the fancy," of which class we had rather too many in the party. The horses, although tethered and close spancelled, could not be secured, even thus. Some had broken away and strayed during the night. It was ascertained by Yuranigh, that four other strange horses ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... a pun. Jeremiah "rolls" out of camp. Elfreda discovers a bear. "He is eating up our food." With the bear's assistance Miss Briggs succeeds in lassoing him. The Overland camp turned ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower |
