For lack of a better place to post, I’ll start a thread on the art of the pun, le calembour or le jeu de mots (play on words) in French from my Cassell’s dictionary, Wortspiel (word game) in German, juego de/sobre palabras (play of/on words) or retruécano in Spanish, and gioco di parole (game of words) in Italian (the last three from WordReference.com’s dictionaries). Do any francophones know the etymology of le calembour; do any hispanophones know the etymology of retruécano?
From two recent EMails:
It’s been a rocky week for the Stock Market. Here’s a summary: Helium was up, feathers were down. Paper was stationary. Ticonderoga Pencils lost a few points. Though Elevators rose, escalators continued their slow decline. Weights were up in heavy trading. Light switches were off. Mining equipment hit rock bottom. The market for raisins dried up. Pampers remained unchanged. Caterpillar stock inched up a bit. Sun peaked at midday. Birds Eye Peas Split. Stanley Tools filed for Chapter 11 and Scott Tissues touched a new bottom.
(Notes: Pampers is a brand of disposable diaper; Caterpillar makes bulldozers and other heavy constructin equipment; Birds Eye is a of frozen vegetables)
A doctor examined a woman, took the husband aside, and said, "I don’t like the looks of your wife at all."
"Me neither doc," said the husband. "But she’s a great cook and really good with the kids.
Two Mexican detectives were investigating the murder of Juan Gonzalez.
"How was he killed?" asked one detective.
"With a golf gun," the other detective replied.
"A golf gun?! What is a golf gun?"
"I don’t know. But it sure made a hole in Juan."
One evening on the old Tonight Show, before Johnny Carson (and waaaayyyyy before Jay Leno), Steve Allen, the original Tonight Show host, came onstage riding an elephant. He said, "This reminds me of the old joke: How do you get down from an elephant? You don’t; you get down from a duck!"
DISCUSSION[/B]
Grant Hutchinson notwithstanding ;), this is a thread in which jokes may have to be explained.
Obviously, puns won’t always translate well from one language to another (e. g., "Helium was up, feathers were down. Paper was stationary."). Puns primarily depend upon homonyms and homophones, although some depend upon two different interpretations of the same phrase.
For instance, some puns depend on words having two different but related meanings meanings (Helium, a light gas, rises/goes up while a stock’s value rises/goes up), some depend upon two totally different meanings for the same word (down meaning light, fluffy feathers from birds such as geese or ducks or down meaning stocks decline in value or down meaning to dismount).
Other puns depend upon words that sound alike but are spelled differently (stationary meaning not moving and stationery meaning writing paper, envelopes, and office supplies.). Here is another pun that depends not only on a homonym but also reversing words in a common saying or idiom (e. g., "I wouldn’t send a dog out on a night like this!" describing a night with particulary nasty weather.).
What I’d like to see are examples of puns in foreign languages along with any necessary explanations.
For instance, I think it was Ilka who once posted about a pun on the meaning of Duden (the official German Dictionary as I recall), something about a sign in a parade that was a play on the word Duden that meant "How do you spell, then?" I searched for it but couldn’t find it: it is probably one of the Famous Lost Threads, a victim of the Sunday Massacre.
Puns are often used in headlines such as this from Excite.com:
That’s What I Call a Traffic Jam!
Aug 17, 9:49 am ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German truck driver lost control of his vehicle while trying to swat a wasp and spilled his 15-ton load of jam jars on the motorway, police said on Tuesday.
"He was trying so hard to kill the wasp that he smashed the truck against the barrier," a spokesman for the motorway police in the western town of Greven said.
"That’s when he really started attracting wasps. There was jam all over the motorway."
Police had to close the A1 motorway for two hours while they cleaned up the mess, causing a long traffic jam.
[quote author=anders link=board=omni;num=1092759094;start=0#2 date=08/17/04 at 13:58:39]I hope that nobody will get the idea of assigning puns to different categories. If they are classified, we won’t be allowed to use them.
Oh, no! Classification helps in the study and perpetuation of the species! The venerable Get Thee to a Punnery by Richard Lederer has chapters on the various types of puns with exercises for the reader.
My paternal grandmother was an expert in destroying puns, in explaining them very thoroughly.
My favourite in Swedish is "Har min herre sett ett trankokeri? - Nej, men jag har sett dem dansa."
"Sir, have you seen a whale-oil factory? - No, but I have seen them dancing."
The pun is "tran", ‘whale-oil’ vs. "trana" ‘crane’.
(Watching the cranes dancing in spring is a major event in Western Sweden, with thousands of people watching.)
Like watching people at a singles’ bar?
Did you ever see a horse fly? A house fly?
Which of course makes me think of the English "My brother was killed by a revolving crane. - My, what fierce birds you have in this country."
Just one more: "Ska vi gå på bio? - Nej, jag tar antibiotika." "What about watching a movie? - No, I’m on antibiotics." bio = cinema.
I can see the "tran" vs. "trana," but how does the "-kokeri" fit in? Cranes (working) in a factory as opposed to dancing?
I’m not adept at any language other than English (the American variety), but from my limited study of French I believe that idioms and humor can lead to a greater understanding of a language.[hr]"A pun is the lowest form of wit."
John Dennis
"If a pun is the lowest form of wit, it is, therefore, the foundation of all wit."
-Henry Erskine
-kokeri means a place for boiling, which is the means of extracting whale-oil from blubber. What I like in the story is that it is not only a pun, but the shocking idea that the answering person might have thought that the highly valued cranes would be subjected to cooking.
And yes, as a pastime it is something like "Standing on the corner, watching all the birds go by".
Not far from puns are similes. How many of you know what kind of destination Hamlet recommended to Ofelia?
[quote author=anders link=board=omni;num=1092759094;start=0#4 date=08/17/04 at 16:37:09]Sllloowwly, then,
-kokeri means a place for boiling, which is the means of extracting whale-oil from blubber. What I like in the story is that it is not only a pun, but the shocking idea that the answering person might have thought that the highly valued cranes would be subjected to cooking.
And yes, as a pastime it is something like "Standing on the corner, watching all the birds go by".
Not far from puns are similes. How many of you know what kind of destination Hamlet recommended to Ofelia?
Ahhh, that explains more. Soupe de grue! (Crane soupe)
And speaking of dancing birds, faire le pied de grue (to make the foot of crane) means to to hang around (waiting) (familiar) or kick one’s heels (British English). Cassell’s also says to dance attendance but I have no idea what that means. If I remember I’ll check it out in my Mansion’s at home.
As for Small Village’s exhortation, as explained in Get Thee to a Punnery, it was "Get thee to a nunnery," whence comes the book’s title, because, unknown to me until I read it, a nunnery was not only a convent, but also a slang term for a house of prostitution!
What a way to tell someone to go, er, uh, whatever herself! :D
As for Small Village’s exhortation, as explained in Get Thee to a Punnery, it was "Get thee to a nunnery," whence comes the book’s title, because, unknown to me until I read it, a nunnery was not only a convent, but also a slang term for a house of prostitution!
In Henry V (III.V. 27-31; DAUPHINS’s reply to Constable) http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/henryv/henryv.3.5.html, it is ‘mettle’, meaning ‘semen virile’ there as well. - The two spellings were used interchangeably until the 19th century. Up until then the phrase to [I]fetch metal[/I], applied to men, meant to masturbate.
The Filter is insensitive to Shakespeare: it didn’t mutilate the ‘Constable’ into a ‘Thingstable’ (Filters in the late 18th C did). All’s Well That Ends Well. (II.ii. 29-34)http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/allswell/allswell.2.2.html
[quote author=Stargzer link=board=omni;num=1092759094;start=0#5 date=08/17/04 at 18:37:13] Cassell’s also says to dance attendance but I have no idea what that means.
"To dance attendance on" means to always be near so as to wait on or to lavish attention on someone.
As in:
George danced attendance on Martha with the hopes of winning her affections. However, Martha’s insouciance was painfully apparent to everyone else.
[quote author=anders link=board=omni;num=1092759094;start=0#12 date=08/18/04 at 16:03:20]I don’t remember having seen the expression "curry favour with" in texts produced outside of India. Do you use it?
Psychophant is a good description of an elephant in must (Hindi [I]mast[/I] ‘rut’).
Yes, we do, but of course we spell ours without the "u" in favor. But, looking it up, it appears to come from curry[sup]1[/sup], to groom a horse with a currycomb [Curry favor, by folk etymology from Middle English currayen favel from Old French correier fauvel, to curry a fallow-colored horse, be hypocritical (from the fallow horse as a medieval symbol of deceit)] as opposed to curry[sup]2[/sup], to season (food) with curry powder, which comes from the Tamil kari.[hr]He curried favor with his boss by taking him to lunch at an Indian restaurant.
[quote author=RK link=board=omni;num=1092759094;start=0#9 date=08/18/04 at 10:00:17]
"To dance attendance on" means to always be near so as to wait on or to lavish attention on someone.
As in:
George danced attendance on Martha with the hopes of winning her affections. However, Martha’s insouciance was painfully apparent to everyone else.
Thanks! It sounded like it should mean something like that, but I’ve never heard that expression before in 53 years of listening and speaking (American) English. Ya lurn sumthin’ new ev’ry day![hr]O.P. (Obligatory Pun for all responses to this thread)
I have a dog that can read. We were taking a walk in the park last week and there was a sign on a bench that said "Wet Paint," so he did.
A woman goes into a bar and asks for a double entendre. So the barman gives her one.
Buh-dum ching!
Incidentally, the BBC News Magazine web site has just restarted its Punorama, in which they choose a story which has been in the news, and invite readers to create an original punning headline for it.
The first story is story about a group of armed robbers who fled empty-handed from a West Midlands wholesalers, after cramming their holdalls so full of coins that they were too heavy to lift. It’s so far attracted entries like "The Great Strain Robbery" and "The heist of embarrassment".
[quote author=edman link=board=omni;num=1092759094;start=15#16 date=08/18/04 at 16:40:44]A woman goes into a bar and asks for a double entendre. So the barman gives her one.
Buh-dum ching!
Incidentally, the BBC News Magazine web site has just restarted its Punorama, . . .The first story is story about a group of armed robbers who fled empty-handed from a West Midlands wholesalers, after cramming their holdalls so full of coins that they were too heavy to lift. . . .
Cool, Ed! I entered a few myself:
Every Clod Has A Silver Lining
Robbers Try To Lift Too Many Pounds
