(by 2 people)
One of my favourite literary devices. Punning. When Lionel Abrahams was still alive, I used to attend his famous writing workshop every Monday night for around 10 or so years. And he and I got along famously in the pun department.
I wish you huge amounts of fun with this delicious list of pun-links.
Blue skies, love, Roy
Links
- BadPuns.com
- Primarily a site with puns, punny cartoons, and a forum on puns. Also includes links, webrings and some wordplay. Accepts submissions.
- Pun of the Day
- Archive of puns in categories such as food, transportation, families, education, and work. Plus a one-liner pun every week day.
- Punpunpun.com
- Has information about the annual O. Henry Punoff in Austin, Texas, Punster of the Year awards, links, and bookshelf. Accepts contributions.
- Chet Meek's Page of Puns
- Wide-ranging list of puns and wordplay, many of which are rhetorical in nature. Gladly accepts submissions from viewers.
- Jest for Pun
- Covers Murphy's Laws, bumper stickers, Punfucious, pick-up lines plus other groaners and one-liners.
- Irish Puns
- Includes puns with a definitely Irish flavor. Submissions accepted.
- Cartoon Captions
- A series of captionless cartoons which depict puns. Supply your own answers and compare them with those of the author.
- Boovietoons
- A series of cartoons punning various movies of the past.
- Pundemonium
- Math, history, literature, names, politics, music, religion, science and technology all get punned. Submissions accepted plus Links.
- Salad Speak
- Numerous puns based on food.
- Puns for the ESL/EFL Classroom
- Designed to help teachers of English as a Second Language. Also covers misuse of English. Requests submissions.
- Planet Mike Puns
- Covers monkey cloning, Gandhi, beer, and flunking English.
- Retarded Puns
- Includes a list of punny book titles.
- ESL Puns
- Examples of wordplay for those learning English as a second language.
- Fish Puns
- Wordplay based on already-existing song titles, with fish as the basic theme.
- MacScouter Puns
- Wordplay on Dick Whittington's cat, psychics, Beethoven, and witch doctors.
- Periodic Table Puns
- A test requiring using the imagination. Requests submissions.
- Homonyms Can Be Punny
- Humor with educational value, designed primarily for kids.
- Ringing Praise
- Puns with a "bell" theme and other subjects.
- Finnish puns
- Examples of Finnish wordplay translated into English.
- Hamlet's Puns
- Paradoxes in Shakespeare's play with annotated index.
- Hot Crossed Puns
- Contains puns and daffynitions.
- Web English Teacher
- Although designed primarily to be instructional, these puns can also be appreciated by all.
- Pick-up Puns
- Musically-oriented wordplay with modestly sexual overtones.
- Steve Brooks Puns
- The six-time winner of the O. Henry Pun-off World Championship offers "Inhale to the Chief", "Tex-Mexexistentialism" and "Lincoln's Texasburg Address".
- JardMail Puns
- Punning with a British flavor.
- Puns Galore
- A searchable database of puns collected from the internet.
- 'Puns of Mass Destruction
- Puns with an occasional international flavor. Includes an analysis of wordplay in "Death of a Salesman".
- Pun World
- Random puns for your enjoyment.
- Once a Pun a Time
- Artistic punny drawings by Robert Paschell: "Graze Anatomy", "Mooed Ring", "Cafe Ole" and others.
- Foreign Puns
- Wordplay from a competition wherein competitors change one letter in a familiar non-English phrase and redefine it.
- Chemistry Puns
- Also includes a punny chemistry test for the reader to fill in the blanks.
- Chemistry Can Be Pun
- A test involving punny definitions of chemical elements.
- Biology Puns
- Material supplied by biology students.
- Physics Puns
- Wordplay from physics students.
- Geography Puns
- A pun-test involving rivers, cities, and countries.
- Mathematics Puns
- Designed perhaps best for the mathematician.
- Med Puns
- Covers all phases of medicine.
- Puzzler Jack
- These puns are medical and scientific in nature.
- Wade's Puns
- Stories covering math, Norwegians and frogs, to name a few.
- Dumb Puns
- A series of questions resulting in punny answers.
- Shaggy Pun Test
- Involves taking a test about 100+ corruptions of phrases. Submissions are accepted.
- Diet Puns
- Dan Worona's contribution to losing weight and humor in general.
- PunLiners.com
- Covers family, law, cows, mathematics and conmen. Offers a free newsletter and links.
- Tribe: Puns
- For those that appreciate the most unappreciated form of word-flay. Forums for letting the puns fly.
- Austin Punoff
- Results of the 2005 O. Henry event.
- The Story of Curly Pi and Polly Nomial
- A story using math puns.
Serious stuff about humour
- What's so Funny? : The Comic Conception of Culture and Society by Murray S. Davis
Jokes, puns, stories, tales, sketches, and shticks saturate our culture. And today the stuff of comedy is almost inescapable, with all-comedy cable channels and stand-up comics acting as a kind of electronic oracle. We're laughing more often, but what are we laughing at? Murray Davis knows. In this inventive book, he uses jokes (good, bad, offensive, and classic) to reveal the truths that comedians deliver. What's So Funny? is not about the psychology of humor but about the objects of our laughter--the world that comics turn upside down and inside out. It also explores the logic of comedy as a serious, critical assault on just about everything we take for granted.
Drawing on a vast array of jokes and the work of dozens of comedians from Jay Leno and Lenny Bruce to Steve Allen and Billy Crystal, Davis reminds us of the extraordinarily subversive power of comedy. When we laugh, we accept the truth of the comic moment: that this is the way life really is. The book is in two parts. In the first, Davis explores the cultural conventions that even simple jokes take apart--the rules of logic, language, rationality, and meaning. In the second, he looks at the social systems that have been at the root of jokes for centuries: authority figures, power relations, and institutions. Whatever their style, comedians use the tools of the trade--ambiguous meanings, missed signals, incongruous characters, unlikely events--to violate our expectations about the world.
Books on Punning at Amazon
The Best Book of Puns
As Oscar Levant said many years ago, "A pun is the lowest form of wit, especially if you didn't think of it first." In this lively collection you'll find a hilarious abundance of pun-ishment for the millions who can't resist giving a word or phrase a twis
Amazon Price: $7.95 (as of 07/09/2008)
Get Thee To a Punnery
The Pun Is Mightier Than The Sword... Richard Lederer has great puns. And you don't have to take vows to enjoy them. Just Get Thee To A Punnery and laugh yourself int a state of grace. Sinners will be punished with such gems as: -Old Milkmaids never die -
Amazon Price: (as of 07/09/2008)
The Play of Words
Amazon Price: $12.60 (as of 07/09/2008)
Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language
Anguished English is the impossibly funny anthology of accidental assaults upon our language. From bloopers and blunders to Signs of the Times to Mixed Up Metaphors...from Two-Headed Headlines to Mangling Modifiers, here is an outrageous treasury of assau
Amazon Price: $7.50 (as of 07/09/2008)
Pun and Games: Jokes, Riddles, Daffynitions, Tairy Fales, Rhymes, and More Word Play for Kids
An introduction to wordplay, including puns, spoonerisms, riddles, and more. Language is fun. Everyone who speaks and listens and reads and writes is involved with the natural playfulness of language.
Amazon Price: $9.95 (as of 07/09/2008)
A Pun My Word
Amazon Price: $14.95 (as of 07/09/2008)
3650 Jokes, Puns & Riddles
The silliest book on the market that goes far beyond the common knock-knock joke, this compilation makes readers alternately chuckle, snicker, groan and laugh out loud with good clean humor. Each page offers a vast array of witty jokes, puns and riddles w
Amazon Price: $11.21 (as of 07/09/2008)
A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Sexual Puns and Their Significance
This dictionary examines previously unnoted puns on the erotic attitudes and practices of the heterosexual and homosexual, the sexual deviant, and the impotent. It includes scatological puns in their usually bawdy contexts and ethnic puns, as sexually sni
Amazon Price: $42.95 (as of 07/09/2008)
