Horrible habbits 11/2/09

OK, Everybody is allowed one bad habit
Of course I keep a selection and rotate them daily (sometimes hourly).

Of all my bad habbits, I best love the dubious beauty of the majestic pun.
The pun or paronomasia, if you wanna get fancy, is a form of word play that exploits similar sounding words for the punnsters own evil purposes, and or amusement.
Believe it or not, there really is a science to punning. they can even be classified... and no by that I do not mean bad worse and total groaners.Though any of those applied to a pun can and often is considered a compliment.



The first kind of pun is the homophonic pun . It uses word pairs that sound alike but are not the same in meaning.
For example, "Atheism: a non-prophet institution"

The second is the compound pun is a sentence that contains two or more puns. Such as, the sign on a golf course "when you have been drinking, do not drive. Don't even putt!"

The recursive pun is one of the most common. Itis a sentence that contains a pun that refers to similar sounding words.
"Where does bad light go? It goes to prism. "

A transpositional pun is a complicated format with two aspects. It involves transposing the words in a well-known phrase or saying to get a clever redefinition of a well-known word unrelated to the original phrase. The redefinition is thus the first aspect, the transposition the second aspect.
" Dieting: a waist is a terrible thing to mind" , is taken from " a mind is a terrible thing to waste. "

Spoonerisms are the act of moving letters about to create a whole new meaning to a statement.
One of my favorites is Dorthy Parker's famous "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy" Later to be coined by tom t bone sankovitz.

A Feghoot is a short story ending in a truly atrocious pun. If you end your tale and the audience does not groan. Please try again.

A Wellerism is a phrase in which a quoted sentence is linked by a pun to the manner in which it is attributed.
"We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car. "

"I should have studied harder," said Tom testily

A daffynition is a pun format involving the reinterpretation of an existing word, on the basis that it sounds like another word .
"How much does a pirate pay for ear rings? a buccaneer."

As you can see the humble, and often horrible, pun has more than the eye can see to it.
There is both an art and a science to it.
It has been immortalized by many famous people. so I will include a few of their words.

The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability. ~Edgar Allan Poe

A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself. ~Doug Larson

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted. ~Fred Allen