What is pun?

“A pun is a phrase that deliberately exploits confusion between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect.

“A pun may also cause confusion between two senses of the same written or spoken word, due to homophony, homography, homonymy, polysemy, or metaphorical usage. Walter Redfern has said: ‘To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms’. Another definition has said that a pun is a word that has two different meanings used simultaneously. For example, in the phrase, ‘There is nothing punny about bad puns’, the pun takes place in the deliberate confusion of the implied word ‘funny’ by the substitution of the word ‘punny’, a heterophone of ‘funny’. By definition, puns must be deliberate; an involuntary substitution of similar words is called a malapropism.

“Puns are a form of word play, and can occur in all natural languages.”

Examples of Punny Quotations

“A pun is a shift of wit. A fart is a whift of shit.”

“A pun is its own reword.” — Dance Drier, British comedian

“Blunt and I made atrocious puns. I believe, indeed, that Miss Blunt herself made a little punkin, as I called it” —Henry James

“If puns are the lowest form of wit, are buns the lowest form of wheat?” — Piers Anthony, Author

“Immanuel doesn’t pun; he Kant.” — Oscar Wilde

“In the beginning was the pun.” — Samuel Beckett, Murphy

“Paris of Troy was so named because his mother had a considerable amount of gaul and married a Frenchman.” — Original Source Unknown.

“Pun (n.): the lowest form of humour” —Samuel Johnson, lexicographer

“Puns are the last refuge of the witless.” —another way of stating the above

“The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.” — Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia, 1849

“‘The man’, says Johnson, ‘that would make / A pun, would pick a pocket!’” .” — Lewis Carroll, “Phantasmagoria”, 1869

“The pun is mightier than the word.” — original source unknown

“95% words in the English language can be incorporated into word-play (while the other 5% can be ex-pun-ged as im-pun-etrable)” — Wayne Redhart (spoof top 500 reviewer on amazon.co.uk)

“You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass.” —Douglas Adams

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pun

Okay. Have pun!