Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Pun   Listen
verb
Pun  v. i.  (past & past part. punned; pres. part. punning)  To make puns, or a pun; to use a word in a double sense, especially when the contrast of ideas is ludicrous; to play upon words; to quibble.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books



... show them their deadly work! Some of them leading Philanthropists, eloquent at Missionary meetings and Bible Societies, paying tribute to the Lord out of the pockets of dying drunkards, fighting glorious battles for slaves, and manfully upholding popular rights. My rich publican—forgive the pun—before you pay tithes of mint and cummin, much more before you claim to be a disciple of a certain Nazarene, take a lesson from one who restored fourfold the money he had wrung from honest toil, or reflect on the case of the man to whom it was said, "Go ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... "This—er, what shall I call him?—stopped me to tell me he was going to rub the marks off me, at the same time wittily making a pun on my name. I was just telling him to hurry, or ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... the Husks in the best manner you can. Then pun them with a due proportion of Sugar, and a little Orange-flower, or Rose-water. When it is in a fitting uniform paste, make it into round Cakes, about the bigness of your hand, or a little larger, and about a finger thick; and lay every ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... think I had gone? My dear Ethel, so I would have gone, if Inez had come down in the sisterly way she should. But she hasn't. I give you my word of honor her conduct has been shabby in the extreme. A few hundreds—I asked no more—and she wouldn't. What was a miserly fifty pun' note to a man like me, with expensive tastes, and who has not set foot on British soil for two years? Not a jewel would she part with—all Sir Victor's presents, forsooth! And she's in love with Sir Victor, you know. Perhaps you don't know, though. 'Pon my life, she ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... 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 ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... invariably perambulate in one of each. We scarcely know whether it be so or not—we merely relate what we have heard; but we incline to the two Bluchers, because of the eight-and-six. The only additional expense likely to add any emolument to the tanner's interest (we mean no pun) is the immense extent of sixpenny straps generally worn. These are described by a friend of ours as belonging to the great class of coaxers; and their exertions in bringing (as a nautical man would say) the trowsers to bear at all, is worthy of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various

... with a broad grin—"Hallo! why, here's a spear, that must ha' been dropped by one o' them savages. That's a piece o' good luck, anyhow, as the man said when he f'und 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 ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... steward to bring his wife. He denied 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 art: the Vineyard ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... several times, or rather its contents have. You know what the Bible says, 'Biteth liek a serpent and stingeth like an adder?' Ah, here it is. But gloomy forebodings seize me: it is suspiciously light. Paradoxically, its lightness induces gravity in me. But that pun is entirely ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... what the heroic look had meant, and her respect for it was great. Its intention had not been to suggest inclusion of George and Kathryn in her pun, it had only with pure justice put it to her to ask herself what her own personal decision in ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the ruin of 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, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... wineglass, "that's the range of his intellect,—only it had never any thing half so good in it." I quote this merely as one of the average bons-mots which made the small change of his ordinary conversation. He would pun, too, in talk, which he scarcely ever did in writing. Thus he extemporized as an epitaph for his friend Charles Knight, "GOOD NIGHT!"—When Mrs. Glover complained that her hair was turning gray,—from using essence of lavender (as she said),—he asked her "whether it wasn't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... I predict—" I began, when my villainous pun was arrested in mid-utterance by the voice of Captain Tolliver, suddenly becoming the ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... 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 ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... indeed, which in the social circle will in spite of all due gravity awaken a harmless smile, and Shenstone solemnly thanked God that his name was not liable to a pun. There are some names which excite horror, such as Mr. Stabback; others contempt, as Mr. Twopenny; and others of vulgar or absurd signification, subject too often to the insolence of domestic witlings, which occasions irritation even in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... went shopping, and Miss Grethe was the bride. She was also musical, and was considered witty. Thus she said one evening when the house-door was closed, and groaned dreadfully on its hinges, "See now, we have port wine after dinner." [Translator's Note: A pun which it is impossible to translate. The Danish word Portviin according to sound, may mean either port wine or the creaking of a door.] The brother, the only son of the house, with whom we shall become better acquainted, had written down this conceit; "but ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... widely disseminated coin in the world, and they had the current value of 5s. But there were too few of them, and therefore the centre of them was cut out and circulated under the name of 'dumps' at 1s. 3d. each, the remainder of the coin—called by way of a pun, 'holy dollars'—still retaining its currency ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... surloin at the lower end of the table, he cried out, 'Bring hither that surloin, sirrah, for 'tis worthy a more honourable post, being, as I may say, not sur-loin, but sir-loin, the noblest joint of all;' which ridiculous and desperate pun raised the wisdom and reputation of England's Solomon to the highest."—Traditions, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... Caroline beauty who was accustomed to sign herself "L duchesse de Portsmout." It is better still in the letter from Walpole to General Conway in chap. xl. of The Virginians, which is perfect, even to the indifferent pun of sleepy (and overrated) George Selwyn. But the crown and top of these pastiches is certainly the delightful paper, which pretends to be No. 341 of the Spectator for All Fools' Day, 1712, in ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... feast of the Circumcision the bursar gives to every 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, aiguille (needle) and ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... Bumpus, with 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

... thing I have against Griswold," declared Jack. "He will pun in the most reckless manner at all times. Some of his jokes are not what they are cracked ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... semblance; affinity, approximation, parallelism; agreement &c. 23; analogy, analogicalness[obs3]; correspondence, homoiousia[obs3], parity. connaturalness[obs3], connaturality[obs3]; brotherhood, family likeness. alliteration, rhyme, pun. repetition &c. 104; sameness &c. (identity) 13; uniformity &c. 16; isogamy[obs3]. analogue; the like; match, pendant, fellow companion, pair, mate, twin, double, counterpart, brother, sister; one's second self, alter ego, chip of the old ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... imperatively demands it; and Shakspeare shows that the word was not unusually so pronounced, as he introduces it with the same quantity in the prose dialogue of "Much Ado about Nothing," and makes it the vehicle of a pun which certainly argues that it was familiar to the public ear as ache and not ake. When Hero asks Beatrice, who complains that she is sick, what she is sick for,—a hawk, a hound, or a husband,—Beatrice replies, that she is sick for—or of—that which begins them all, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... taste of the moment. We know how great was Greene's reputation as an author, how publishers were ready to outbid one another for the very dregs of his wit. Thomas Brabine was but voicing the general opinion when, in some verses prefixed to Menaphon, he wrote, condescending to an inevitable pun, but also to ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... seems here to contain a pun, the consonantic outline of "Tasht""basin" being the same as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... through the means of slavery that the light of the true faith was first brought to our island, where it has burnt with a purer flame than elsewhere; for, if you recollect, the beauty of some English children exposed for sale at Rome, assisted by a Latin pun, caused the introduction of Christianity into Great Britain; and who knows but that this traffic, so offensive to humanity, has been permitted by an Allwise Power, with the intent that some day it shall be the means of introducing Christianity ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... knowing blades, who put 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... "It's a pun!" the King added in an angry tone, and everybody laughed. "Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... genius of the particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... 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 ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... it stand; for in the name of the cursores I see the raw material of many sad jokes—whereunto I pray I may never be tempted, but may leave them for an easy exercise for such as have set out upon the shameless career of the irreclaimable pun-flinger. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... court; for, of five officers that were to meet there, three, besides Booth, were confined to that air which hath been always found extremely wholesome to a broken military constitution. And here, if the good reader will pardon the pun, he will scarce be offended at the observation; since, how is it possible that, without running in debt, any person should maintain the dress and appearance of a gentleman whose income is not half ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... Sleggy again, young man. Next time it will be one in the mouth.—Yes, boys," he continued, drawing himself up, "I do mean to hit hard, and let the Principal and the masters see that we are not going to have favouritism here. Indian prince, indeed! Yah! who's he? Why, I could sell him for a ten-pun note, stock and lock and bag and baggage, to Madame Tussaud's. That's about all he's fit for. Dressed up to imitate an English gentleman! Look at him! His clothes don't fit, even if they are made by ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... chipmonastery?" cried Groups. It was a family joke to call the chipmunk's burrow by that name, and though the puppies did not understand the pun ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... Government. My father was a little boy at that time, and my grandfather 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 of ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... nothing else." The old man turned his head slightly, and replied, "What you see is the badger scratching his neck against a tree; the ticks are evidently tickling him." And he chuckled as he recognised his unintentional pun. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... witticisms, I wonder, were roared into the deaf ears of old Thomas Westwood, who heard them not, alas! but who laughed all the same, out of pure sociability, and with a pleasant sense that something funny had been said! And what of that ill-fated pun which Lamb, in a moment of deplorable abstraction, let fall at a funeral, to the surprise and consternation of the mourners? Surely a man who could joke at a funeral never meant his pleasantries to be hoarded ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... section of wire bare. He laughed to himself as he slipped the little microphone out of his left ear. Now he was half deaf as well as half lame—he was literally giving himself to this cause. He would have to remember the pun to tell Alec Diger later, if there was a later. Alec had a profound weakness ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison

... "punning, like beer and other vices, is the peculiar prerogative of men, I suppose. But you need not be afraid. I read PUNCHINELLO sometimes, and it is a terrible warning to people who are tempted to pun. I could give you frightful instances of the appalling depth to which the men who make puns ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various

... had tried Turgot, the political economist, and Necker, the banker, as ministers; but both 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

... and while it would be too much to say that his heart is not in his theme—that he stands detached from it—still, his sympathies are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking, antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised work appeals, primarily, to the taste and the ear: always, perhaps, to the head rather than to the heart. ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker

... pun. Steele leaned against the counter, his gray glance studying the man I had so ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... 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 ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... Grandma's makin' Loads of mince and pun'kin pies? Don't you smell those goodies cookin'? Can't you see 'em? Where's your eyes? Tell that rooster there that's crowin', Cute folks now are keepin' mum; They don't show how fat they 're growin' When they ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... excellence) Princkocke Proclamation that the gentry should reside at their mansions in the country Proculus Prologue spoken by a woman Protest, affected use of the word (See Dyce's Shakespeare Glossary.) Puckfist Puerelis Puisne Puisnes of the Inne Pumpion Pun[to] reversos ( back-handed strokes in fencing) Push Putt a girdle round about ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... could possibly guess the riddle of the bamboo. It represents a sort of pun in symbolism. There are two Chinese characters both pronounced setsu—one signifying the node or joint of the bamboo, and the other virtue, fidelity, constancy. Therefore is the bamboo used as a felicitous sign. The name 'Setsu,' be it observed, is often given to Japanese maidens—just ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... you what it is, Tom," said one of the captains; "I will not have you in my company if you do that again. The man who would make a bad pun and a hackneyed pun in such beautiful scenery as this, would—I don't know what enormity he would not commit. Come ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... the auctioneer, "he isn't hurt: the article belonged to his mother and her sister; the brother-in-law isn't on good terms; so he demanded a public sale. She will get back four pun ten out of it." Here the clerk put in his word. "And there's five pounds paid, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... 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 merely gave ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... was their old-time pun upon the foreman's name. He got to his feet and approached. "It does me good," he said, extending ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... 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

... rather, to stretch a bad pun till it bursts, my pocket-dictionary—I require the aid of your benevolently-squandered talents for the correction of these proofs. I am, as usual, both idle and busy this morning; so draw pen, and set to work ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... to the opinion that it's better t' boy should not go out any more wi' t' dorgs. Let 'em bide at home, I'll take 'em oot when they need it. If Bess takes it into her head to pin a coo there might be trouble, an I doan't want trouble. Her last litter o' pups brought me a ten pun note, and if they had her oop at 'a court and swore her life away as a savage brute, which she ain't no way, it would pretty nigh break ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... gas-bags of rubbered fabric. The ship was fitted with two Wolseley motors of one hundred and eighty horse-power each, and with a whole series of vertical and horizontal rudders. She was popularly called the Mayfly—a name which, both in and out of Parliament, suggested to bright wits an ill-omened pun. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... the fol- lowing 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 than ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... the science of Gunter, Jack of all trades that he was, empowered him to perpetrate a fine pun on the United States surveyor-general in California, General Beall. This official acquired in his course so much real estate of the first quality that on a reference being made to it in the President's hearing, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... new under the sun When Europe was a jungle half Asia flocked to the canonical conferences of Buddhism; and for centuries the people have gathered at Pun, Hurdwar, Trimbak, and Benares in immense numbers. A great meeting, what you call a mass meeting, is really one of the oldest and most popular of Indian institutions in this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been employed in clerical ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... he restored the caste-divisions, and carried fire and sword into the lands of his enemies. He transported many captives to Egypt; fortified his eastern frontier; and built, in the Gulf of Suez, a fleet of large and small ships, in order to traffic with Pun and the "Holy Land,"[EN46] and to open communication with the "Incense-country" and with the wealthy shores of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... give me leave to offer my conjecture, which you may have by a little transmutation of a vulgar adage, in such manner as to obtain at one and the same time (so to speak) not only a strong reason for my alleged inhumanity, but also an apparent pun, and a seeming paradox; all which you have for the small and easy charge of saying, The belly has ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... upon us. There was no lightning in his 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 full ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... disposition to see a bright, a laughable side to every thing, may be set down as one of the peculiarities of the Yankee soldier. In victory or defeat, success or disaster, ease or hardship, some one of a group of soldiers could find something from which to extract a jest or on which to found a pun. ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... they aint particular now-a-days chunks o' cabbages, and scarcity, and pun'kin, and that all the sass that ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... honest as he can weel afford, an' but for a wheen auld scandals, near forgotten noo, is a pairfec'ly respectable and thoroughly decent man. Or if I fashed wi' him ava', it wad be kind o' handsome like; a pun'-note under his stair door, or a bottle o' auld, blended malt to his bit marnin', as a teshtymonial like yon ye ken sae ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... all the several Voices lost their Distinction, and rose up in a confused Humming; which created in me a Reflection that could not come into the Mind of any but of one a little too studious; for I said to my self, with a kind of Pun in Thought, What Nonsense is all the Hurry of this World to those who are above it? In these, or not much wiser Thoughts, I had like to have lost my Place at the Chop-House, where every Man according to the natural Bashfulness or Sullenness of our Nation, eats in a publick Room ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... I were not ashamed of making a pun, or, as we say in academic circles, being guilty of antanaclasis, I would ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... the little man, "a fi'-pun note!" And thrusting needle into the garment he was making he rose with brisk alacrity. "What d'ye want in my ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... thought himself a wag but who forgot every morning what he had wagged about the day before, would say for his daily greeting, "Wie [as the Germans say] befinden sie sich?" He thought the pun on sea-sick was awfully funny, and would laugh uproariously. He said to Mr. Palmer, "Why are you not like a melon?" We all guessed. One person said, "Because he was not meloncholic [Aulick]." But all the guesses were wrong. "No," said the captain, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... just outside Marguerite Audoux's house after my first visit to her. "Tiens," he said, "tu viens de la mansarde de Genie l'ouvriere." And the clever little pun was true. Marguerite Audoux is a genius, and she does not understand what people mean when they ask her "how" she "writes." She opens her weak eyes very wide at the question, laughs as a child laughs when it doesn't understand, and says, "But I don't know. The thoughts come, and I write them down. ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux

... wine,' said he, 'we have often drunk it together at this very table. I remember one day she said to me, holding out her glass, which she had already emptied several times, 'Fill up again, it is good for one's bones.' A poor pun, eh? Worthy, at the most, of the mistress of a farce writer. Ah! She could ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... of James' love of jesting, observes:—"The age in which the pun chiefly flourished was in the reign of King James the First. That learned monarch was himself a tolerable punster, and made very few bishops or privy-councillors that had not sometime or other signalized themselves by a clinch or a conundrum. It was therefore in this age that ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... that Shakespeare is at first unsure of his personage; he fumbles a little; yet the vivacity, the roaring life, is certainly a quality of the original Falstaff, for it attends him as constantly as his shadow; the pun, too, is his, and the phrase "sweet wag" is probably taken from his mouth, for he repeats it again, "sweet wag," and again "mad wag." The shamelessness, too, and the lechery are marks of him, and the love of witty word-warfare, and, above all, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... again the beautiful woman, made a feast and ordered the steward to bring his wife. He denied that he had one, but brought her at last, and while every one else was talking gaily at the feast she was silent. The king observed it and asked the cause of her silence, and she answered with a pun on her own 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... have but just got it. I'm not going home." (He lived eight miles off, near Axe.) "I've got to go to a Church meeting at Red Cow, and I'm sleeping there. John's Ernest is calling here for me presently. I don't fancy driving over them moors with near a thousand pun in my pocket—and colliers out on strike—not at my age, missis! If you don't know what Red Cow is, I reckon I do. It's your money. Put it in a drawer and say nowt, and I'll fetch it to-morrow. What'll happen to it, think ye, seeing ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... Finding myself labouring under a cold, I avoided wine, and while my companion discussed his Chateau Margaut, I kept up a languid conversation with him, enlivened occasionally by the snap of a walnut-shell or indifferent pun, with now and then an enquiry or remark respecting the street passengers. Amongst those, the milk-vender and lady at the moment happened to pass along—"By the by," I said, "there is one peculiarity about that Pair I cannot help remarking. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... Morgan's bon-mots 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... to MARGARET, while this daring act of marine horsemanship in progress, that "I hope the horse won't founder"—meaning to pun ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... and inquires where he got it. Evidently the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it "around here somewhere." Evidently the friend contracts to help him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly antic (pun not intended), then take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions. Presently they take a rest and confer together. They decide that something ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... bad as fancy for precisely the same reason that it would be good as a pun. The comparison is unintentionally wanting in logic, just as a pun is intentionally so. To make the contrast what it should have been,—to make it coherent, if I may use that term of a contrast,—it ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... my reader has survived this pun, I will now go on to state that it is a common thing in Corea to begin a dinner with sweets, and that another curious custom is for all present to drink out of the same bowl of wine passed round and of course re-filled when empty. The dinner is served on tiny tables ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... goes to the door and calls.) Mrs. Farrell! (Returning, and again addressing the Orderly.) Civil rights don't mean the right to be uncivil. (Pleased with his own wit.) Almost a pun. Ha ha! ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw

... was no comedy to Jane,—her blind Garth at the piano, his dear beautiful head bent over the keys, his fingers feeling for that pathetic little notch, to be made by herself, below middle C. She loathed this individual who could make a pun on the subject of Garth's blindness, and, in the back of her mind, Tommy seemed to join the duchess, flapping up and down on his perch and shrieking: "Kick ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... has described Lamb's manner or merits so well as Hazlitt: "He always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like tears; ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... 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

... hast been to Philadelphia, where all the streets rhyme, and every corner is a pun upon the next. May the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... work; it often begins well, and usually has some vivid description of nature, or some gallant passage in swinging verse, which stirs us like martial music; then the poem falls to earth like a stone, and presently appears some wretched pun or jest or scurrility. Our present remedy lies in a book of selections, in which we can enjoy the poetry without being unpleasantly reminded of the author's besetting sins of flippancy and ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... with the wing of a chicken saute au supreme, coquetted with perdrix perdu masque a la Montmorenci, and tasted a boudin a la Diebitsch. The wines were excellent—the Geisenheim delicious—the Champagne sparkling like a pun of Jekyll's. But nothing aroused the attention of the Viscount Chambery so much as a liqueur, which Mr. Graeme assured him was new, and had just been sent him by the Conte de Desir. The dessert had been some time on the table, when the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... Tholomyes, 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; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... references close the history. In A Woman is a Weathercock, III, iii, printed in 1612, but written earlier, one of the actors exclaims of an insufferable pun: "O Newington Conceit!" The fact that this sneer is the only reference to the Newington Playhouse found in contemporary literature is a commentary on the low esteem in which the building was held by ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... sveet cove," rejoined Jack, "and no vun vould suppose for a moment that you cut Sal Gordon's throat, the night you coaxed her hoff to marry her, just because you took a fancy to a couple of five-pun notes she had in her trash-bag that she refused to give hup ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... "Bore." Never pun on this word. It is never done in really good sporting society. But you can make a few remarks, here and there, about the comparative merits of twelve-bore and sixteen-bore. Choose a good opening for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various

... effort to talk with him, as we were obliged to drop our pearls into a huge ear-trumpet. From this courteous and kind-hearted man of letters, (I hope, the German literati in general may resemble this first specimen), I heard a tolerable Italian pun, and an interesting anecdote. When Buonaparte was in Italy, having been irritated by some instance of perfidy, he said in a loud and vehement tone, in a public company—"'tis a true proverb, gli Italiani tutti ladroni"—(that is, the Italians ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... fortune by the sale of mourning snuff-boxes, whereon the portrait of the young Queen, in a black frame of shagreen, gave rise to the pun: "Consolation in chagrin." All the fashions, and every article of dress, received names expressing the spirit of the moment. Symbols of abundance were everywhere represented, and the head-dresses of the ladies were surrounded by ears of wheat. Poets sang of the ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... statesmen of the Commonwealth in a mighty sieve through which came tumbling head foremost to perdition the hated Advocate and his abettors. Another showed the Arminians as a row of crest-fallen cocks rained upon by the wrath of the Stadholder—Arminians by a detestable pun being converted into "Arme haenen" or "Poor cocks." One represented the Pope and King of Spain blowing thousands of ducats out of a golden bellows into the lap of the Advocate, who was holding up his official robes to receive them, or whole carriage-loads ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Wellington with a feeling of pained regret, a fellow-wanderer by our side telling us how he had once lost "fi-pun-note"—and about two-thirds of the city unemployed on the wharf looking for that half-sovereign. Well, we hope that some poor devil found it; although, to tell the truth, we would then have by far preferred ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... She was even wearier than she had been when she occupied the outdoor apartment under the park bench where she spent her second night in New York. She called that an "aparkment" and liked the pun so well that she longed to tell her husband. But that would have compelled the telling of her real name, and she did not know him well enough for that yet. She found that she did not know him well enough yet for ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... 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 the deer-stealing tradition, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... forcibly and 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 the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... 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 ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... and noticed that whenever the text contained any hint at matters of sex—which was not infrequent in Juvenal and Horace— this man would look at him with a grin and a sly wink. And sometimes Thyrsis would make a casual remark in conversation, and the man would twist it out of its meaning, or make a pun out of it—to find some excuse for his satyr's leer. So at last Thyrsis was moved to say to him—"Don't you ever realize what a state ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... of him." The classical part of the audience resented the touches of Spanish local colour in the play, the mixture of pleasantries and familiar speeches with the tragic dialogue, and of heroism and savagery in the character of Hernani, and they made all manner of fun of the species of pun—de ta suite, j'en suis—which terminated the first act. "Certain lines were captured and recaptured, like disputed redoubts, by each army with equal obstinacy. On one day the romantics would carry a passage, which the enemy would ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... his a memorial—slight, but such as the circumstances allowed—of an evening spent with Charles and Mary Lamb, in the winter of 1821-22. The record is of the most unambitious character; it pretends to nothing, as the reader will see, not so much as to a pun, which it really required some singularity of luck to have missed from Charles Lamb, who often continued to fire puns, as minute guns, all through the evening. But the more unpretending this record is, the more appropriate it becomes by that very ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... equivalent?) "Euhemeristic" also found me somewhat on my beam-ends, though explanation is here given; yet I felt I could do without Euhemerus; and you perhaps without the humerous. You can pardon me now; for so bad a pun places me at your mercy indeed. But seriously, simple English in prose writing and in all narrative poetry (however monumental language may become in abstract verse) seems to me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of German innovations. I know Coleridge went ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... as if you said, 'Here is a bit of toasted cheese; come little mice! I invite you!' when, oh, foul breach of the rites of hospitality! I mean to assassinate my too credulous guests! No, I cannot set a trap, but I should vastly like to make a Pitt—fall. (Smoke the Pun!). But concerning the mice, advise thou, lest there be famine in the land. Such a year of scarcity! Inconsiderate mice! Well, well, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... no such person as Love, and does the writer mean merely to pun upon the word? Cupid certainly played the fool in the court of Henry VIII. as much ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various

... as a 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

... you are! 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 ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... his brother officers did not esteem him. The fortune he possessed made him cautious. He was nicknamed, for two reasons, "captain of crows." In the first place, he could smell powder a league off, and took wing at the sound of a musket; secondly, the nickname was based on an innocent military pun, which his position in the regiment warranted. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious Montefiore family of Milan (though the laws of the Kingdom of Italy forbade him to bear his title in the French service) ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac

... thought, bright thought, happy thought; sally; flash of wit, flash of merriment; scintillation; mot[Fr], mot pour rire [French]; witticism, smart saying, bon-mot,jeu d'esprit[Fr],epigram; jest book; dry joke, quodlibet, cream of the jest. word-play, jeu de mots[Fr]; play of words, play upon words; pun, punning; double entente, double entendre &c. (ambiguity) 520[Fr]; quibble, verbal quibble; conundrum &c. (riddle) 533; anagram, acrostic, double acrostic, trifling, idle conceit, turlupinade|. old joke, tired joke, flat joke, Joe Miller|!. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... you forgot, my jocund Boy! DAVUS, [12] the harbinger of childish joy; For ever foremost in the ranks of fun, The laughing herald of the harmless pun; Yet, with a breast of such materials made, Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid; 270 Candid and liberal, with a heart of steel In Danger's path, though not untaught to feel. Still, I remember, in the factious strife, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... explained Harry, "a grizzly bear you know. Dad says he's the biggest he's ever seen and he seems to bear—excuse the pun, please—he seems to bear a charmed life. All the boys on the ranch are crazy to get a shot at him, but they've never been ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... 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 a ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... sweetest Shakespeare sole, A hundred hurts a day I do forgive ('Tis little, but, enchantment! 'tis for thee): Small curious quibble; Juliet's prurient pun In the poor, pale face of Romeo's fancied death; Cold rant of Richard; Henry's fustian roar Which frights away that sleep he invocates; Wronged Valentine's unnatural haste to yield; Too-silly shifts of maids that ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled, no doubt, by my facetiously, he translates "mettant, comme on l'a tres-judicieusement fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la clef." The great ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the pink of propriety, no doubt about that!" said the rascal, laughing heartily at his heartless pun. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous

... been listening to the dialogue, looked aghast, and evinced a strong inclination to ask a question, but was checked by a look from his wife. Mr. Wisbottle laughed, and said Tomkins had made a pun; and Tomkins laughed too, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... in this material age, When school boys trample on the Inspir'd Page, When coblers prove by syllogistick pun The soal they mend, and that of man are one; 'Twere waste of time to check the Muses' speed, For all the whys and wherefores of their creed; To show how prov'd the juices are the same That feed the body, and the ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... a pun worthy of Milton's worst prose. Or he might have twitted him with "a sequent king who seeks." As for the sh sound, a poet could hardly have found it ungracious ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... the Queen said, obviously delighted. "What a lovely pun! And how much better because purely unconscious! My, my, Sir Kenneth, I never suspected you of a pointed sense of humor—could you be a descendant of Sir Richard Greene, ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett

... pun in the fourth line which suggests more than even a free translation can express. War['e] means "I," or "mine," or "one's own," etc., according to circumstances; and war['e] m['e] (written separately) might ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... "What do you mean by 'maistly'? Did you come here when you were a child?" "Na, I didna' cam here when I was a chiel," he replied. "Then what do you mean by 'maistly,' if you have not lived here most of your life?" counsel asked. "Weel, when I cam here I weighed eighty pun, and now I weigh three hundred, so that I maun be maistly a native." [Laughter.] So, perhaps, that "maistly" may be the claim to be a Dutchman which some of us may make, if we ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... 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.) sings of "our ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... will excuse these clothes. I am going to the theater; that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these. Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our sophistication, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... do know Howe," answered Horne, with a smile, which indicated that he enjoyed even a sickly pun. "I should think you had known ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... sir, that's for future occasions. This 'ere present one, in orferin' fourteen pun, you've let the cat out o' the bag, and what I could ha' done had you consulted me sooner I can't do now; I could ha' got him for a fi'-pun note at one time, but they've worked on your feelins, and, mark my words, they'll want twenty pun as the price o' that there dawg, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... pun?" Beatrice blinked her big eyes at him. "If you're quite through with the train-robbers, perhaps you will ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... was the dram-shop. The descent to it was through a low door and by a staircase as steep as a classic Alexandrine. Over the door, by way of a sign there hung a marvellous daub, representing new sons and dead chickens,* with this, pun below: Aux sonneurs pour les trepasses,—The wringers ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... quits: that's for your Dog Star. I suppose you think nobody can make a pun or a pill, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the account of Suffenus, as well as some other pieces, and come to that very short one in which he complains of the mortgage which is on his villa. It is a wretched pun on the word "opponere," and was scarcely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... a man who'll smile and joke When with misfortune crowned; Who'll pun beneath a pauper's yoke, And as he breaks his daily ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... the University Church, "a particular part," says the Westminster Review, "is appropriated to the heads of the houses, and is called Golgotha therefrom, a name which the appearance of its occupants renders peculiarly fitting, independent of the pun."—Am. ed., Vol. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... of laying hand over head on a man." A pun; but an old one. I remember, when Swan[16] made that pun first, he ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... at length was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the spiteful squib and pun The girls ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... no necessity, said Sir Jabez Flap, F.R.S., that most entertaining exponent of the facetious side of the stars, that we should ever have gone to the moon to find out such easy inferences, and points the pun with an allusion to Gruyere, but he certainly might have announced his knowledge of the hollowness of the moon before. And if the moon is hollow, then the apparent absence of air and water is, of course, quite easily explained. The sea lies within at the bottom of the caverns, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... 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 question ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... your analogical pun, what does it amount to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, pretty much ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... or Mood, and 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 which ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi

... "Three pun' five! Did I?" he said. "Ah, but that was a partic'lar good week. I've got a missus and a lot o' bairns to keep, and ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... 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 his uniform in ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... good pun, or what a bad one?" asked Bouldon with perfect simplicity. "But, I say, Gregson, are there any other fish but your friends, the newts, in this pond, do you think? because if there are not, I vote we ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... it that a man is on the whole as safe in one place as another; and, after all, he had better end with a bullet than bark in his body. If we are not taken off with the sword, we are like to march off with an ague in this mud basket; and to conclude with a very bad pun, to the ear rather than to the eye, better martially than marsh-ally:—the situation of Missolonghi is not unknown to you. The dykes of Holland when broken down are the Deserts of Arabia for ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... think this is an excellent, though unintentional, pun. "Pudor" is Spanish for "shame," but this meaning makes the sentence difficult to read (at best), although it does convey the intent. I think that the word intended is "powder," but left the original in case ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... 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 the ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... Billy here, or one of the marabous, as he stands with his shoulders humped up about his head, and make a joke. He won't see it. He will lift his eyebrows with a certain look of contempt, and continue to cogitate—about nothing. If the joke is a very bad pun—such a frightful pun that even a stork will see and resent it—perhaps he will chatter his beak savagely, with a noise like the clatter of the lid on an empty cigar-box; but he will continue his sham meditations. "Ah, my friend," he seems to say, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various



Words linked to "Pun" :   paronomasia, play, punning, joke, wordplay, jest, punster, fun, sport



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com