Lets all Have PUN !!!

I am a self declared ( sometimes condemned - but mostly admired !!!) fan / addict of PUNNING !!!

And, I have been for a long long time !!!!

In fact I remember responding to a "structured" discussion on puns in school almost 20 years ago !!!

The teacher read out a statement - "Life depends on the LIVER" and asked if we could figure out the double meanings in it.

I promptly answered, saying that meaning no.1 was that Life depended on the person living it. Meaning no. 2 was that Life also depended on the state of your health - in this case signified by the organ, the LIVER !!

I got pat on the back from the teacher - who then declared that LIVER was a PUN !!!! I also got lots of amazed looks from the other students !!!

My formal career in Punning had been launched !!!

The fun of punning for me has always been the amazing possibllity of interpreting MORE than ONE meaning to the same word / concept !

And for that, I salute the ENGLISH language for allowing so many many LOOPHOLES which allow the wild and wonderful of Punning to flourish !!!

A serious attempt at defining punning ( wikipedia) reveals the following :

A pun (also known as paronomasia) is a figure of speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious.

A pun can rely on the assumed equivalency of multiple similar words (homonymy), of different shades of meaning of one word (polysemy), or of a literal meaning with a metaphor.

Bad puns are sometimes called "cheesy".

Walter Redfern (in Puns, Blackwell, London, 1984) succinctly said: "To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms".

In order to be able to pun effectively it is necessary that a language must include homonyms which may readily be misrepresented as synonyms. Languages with complex gender or case structures tend not to facilitate this, although puns can be constructed in all languages with varying degrees of difficulty; i.e. puns are said to be easy to construct in languages such as Chinese or English, but rarer in Russian.

A realisation came to me about a Universal Truth : Everyone loves Puns - they just REACT to them in different ways !

Reaction 1 ( The Honest one) : Wow !! How do you do that ?! Its so amazing ! And you just thought of that right now ?!

Reaction 2 ( The Sour Grapes one) : Groan ! Groan ! Not again !!! When will you stop ?

Reaction 3 ( The Fence sitter one) : That was nice ! ( wince wince !) / That sucked ! ( with a smile of admiration !)

Unfortunately I know a lot who fall into Reaction no.2 or 3 - as if it is beyond their dignity to laugh at a well cracked pun ! As far as Reaction 1 goes, well quite rare indeed !!

I mean - hey lighten up ! I am just having PUN !!

Also, for those who do not know, there are many BENEFITS to PUNNING :

• For the PHYSICALLY INSPIRED, PUNNING is like RUNNING - It is an exercise - for my brain - which is always in tip top shape.


• For the SPIRITUALLY INCLINED, It is helpful in BUILDING AWARENESS


• For the SEXUALLY INCLINED, it helps in chatting up the Opposite Sex, especially when you run out of words !


• For the ENTERTAINMENT CHALLENGED ( Bored), it is a great way to pass time


• For the ROMANTICALLY FRUSTRATED it is a great way to create POETRY

So, as you can see there is a very POSITIVE side to PUNNING. It is definitely not the PUNishment that it is made out to be !!! :-)