"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moechte gerne etwas geniessen ohne 'Kosten' zu haben." A a pun upon the word "kosten," which has two meanings—"taste" and "cost." In "Die Traumdeutung," third edition, p. 71 footnote, Professor Freud remarks that "the finest example of dream interpretation left us by the ancients is based upon a pun" (from "The Interpretation ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... without respect.' The lark heralds the dawn, so Romeo must leave her, ergo, the lark sings 'out of tune,' his strains are full of 'discords' and 'sharps.' The last two lines contain an interesting allusion in the word 'division,' besides the pun on 'she ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... lines have occurred in vol. i. 238, where I have noted the punning "Sabr" patience or aloes. I quote Torrens: the Templar, however, utterly abolishes the pun in the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... highfalutin millionaire, you mean. [Chuckling]. Haw! ha ha! really very nearly a pun, that. [He sits down ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... would never have done that on purpose. I assured him that I knew he had said it accidentally, but it stopped us talking about Ward, because, when you hate puns, it is most discomforting to make one suddenly. I made a pun once—I can still remember it, because if I had performed this feat intentionally I should have deserved all I got. What I did get was a dig in the ribs from Collier and the remark, "You are a wag," and then I had to repeat it to his three cousins, one ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... clothes. I am going to the theater; that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these. Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... [647] The pun depends in the Greek on the similarity of the final syllables of [Greek: subine], and [Greek: katabinesi]. It can be ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... sir, there's a hofficer of the law downstairs and he wants Mr. Tempenny or forty pun', sixteen ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... 'e get it? Easy 'nuff, in them days! As soon as we 'ad a bin over th' rail, 'e 'ud 'ave us down in 'is bloomin' book—slops supplied—five pun' 'ere—six pun' there—an' so on! ... Well, I was sayin' as we was goin' south, round th' 'Orn! Winter time it was—an' cold! Cruel! Ye couldn't tell who ye'r feet belonged to till ye 'ad ye'r boots off. West an' sou'-west gales, 'ard ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Emma, by making a pun about its all being Greek to me, but I shan't." He returned to Page Two, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... thinks that Legrand is frankly a symbolist. We side with Mauclair in not trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula. He is anything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and also shockingly frank at times. Take the plate with a pun for a title, Le paing quotidien ("paing" is slang for "poing," a blow from the fist, and may also mean the daily bread). A masculine brute is with clinched fist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. He is well dressed. His silk hat is shiny, his mustache curled in the true ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... but you will have pity on the ignorance of one who is so new to the profession. As I have intimated, I am no more than an unworthy barrister, in the service of his Majesty, expressly sent from home on a particular errand. It it were not a pitiful pun, I might add, I am ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... explained, taking it for granted Bob knew nothing of the games, "this is ruelay. You play your money on one number and then rue it." The hill billy chuckled at his pun. "There are 36 numbers on the table," he pointed a long forefinger, "and there are 36 numbers on the wheel. You put your money or chip—the chips are five cents apiece—on one number, and if the ball stops ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... Van wants grace, who never wanted wit! The stage how loosely does Astraea tread, Who fairly puts all characters to bed! And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws, To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause! But fill their purse, our poet's work is done, Alike to them, by pathos or by pun. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... sir, since you do express such a deal o' love for 'im, and promise to be so good to 'im, I'll make a sacrifice and let you 'ave 'im for three pun ten—come!" ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... Earl of Kelly Boswell records the following pun:—'At a dinner at Mr. Crosbie's, when the company were very merry, the Rev. Dr. Webster told them he was sorry to go away so early, but was obliged to catch the tide, to cross the Firth of Forth. "Better stay a little," said ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of Love" by Simmias, a Rhodian, who lived before 300 B.C. The verses are graduated so as to form a pair of wings. "The first altar," written by Dosiadas of Rhodes, is the earliest instance of a Greek acrostic, or of any one which formed words. An acrostic is a play upon spelling, as a pun is upon sound; and in both cases the complication is too slight for real humour. They are rather to be considered as ingenious works of fancy. The first specimens are those in the Psalms—twelve ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... very—er—engrossing occupation," returned Hilliard, nobly resisting the inclination to pun; "but I think it could manage without me for a few days longer, and perhaps we could have another ride together. There is a meet somewhere near the day after to- morrow. ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... processes by which he extracts "The Great Light; spirit of light," from Michabo, "beyond a doubt!" In my poor opinion, whatever claims Michabo may have as an unique creator of earth and heaven—"God is Light,"—he owes his mythical aspect as a Hare to something other than an unconscious pun. In any case, according to Dr. Brinton, Michabo, regarded as a creator, is equivalent to Strachey's Ahone. This amount of corroboration, valeat quantum, I may claim, from the Potomac Indians, for the belief in Ahone on the James ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... differs from the version formerly received, which intimates that the epitaphs were written before Goldsmith arrived: whereas the pun, "the late Dr. Goldsmith" appears to have suggested the writing of the epitaphs. In the "Retaliation", Goldsmith has not spared the characters and failings of his associates, but has drawn them with satire, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... makin' Loads of mince and pun'kin pies? Don't you smell those goodies cookin'? Can't you see 'em? Where's your eyes? Tell that rooster there that's crowin', Cute folks now are keepin' mum; They don't show how fat they 're growin' When they ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... kind he more rarely indulged. "He is below par on the Exchange," a friend remarked of a notorious puffing actor; "he doesn't stand well at Lloyds." "Yet no one stands so well with the under-writers," said Dickens; a pun that Swift would have envied. "I call him an Incubus!" said a non-literary friend, at a loss to express the boredom inflicted on him by a popular author. "Pen-and-ink-ubus, you mean," interposed Dickens. So, when Stanfield said of his mid-shipman son, then absent ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... obtained from an old friend of his a memorial—slight, but such as the circumstances allowed—of an evening spent with Charles and Mary Lamb, in the winter of 1821-22. The record is of the most unambitious character; it pretends to nothing, as the reader will see, not so much as to a pun, which it really required some singularity of luck to have missed from Charles Lamb, who often continued to fire puns, as minute guns, all through the evening. But the more unpretending this record is, the more appropriate it becomes ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... hear of my Cottage and Garden; so now I will shut up shop and have done. We have had a dismal wet May; but now June is recompensing us for all, and Dr. Blow may be said to be leading the great Garden Band in full chorus. This is a pun, which, profound in itself, you must not expect to enjoy at first reading. I am not sure that I am myself conscious of the full meaning of it. I know it is very hot weather; the distant woods steaming blue under the noonday ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... have often drunk it together at this very table. I remember one day she said to me, holding out her glass, which she had already emptied several times, 'Fill up again, it is good for one's bones.' A poor pun, eh? Worthy, at the most, of the mistress of a farce writer. Ah! ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... safe in one place as another; and, after all, he had better end with a bullet than bark in his body. If we are not taken off with the sword, we are like to march off with an ague in this mud basket; and to conclude with a very bad pun, to the ear rather than to the eye, better martially than marsh-ally:—the situation of Missolonghi is not unknown to you. The dykes of Holland when broken down are the Deserts of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... couldn't he do like I told him for?"—thus ran the indictment—"Goard A'mighty don't know, nor yet anybody else! Why—he don't know, hisself! I says to him, I says, just you clear out them lodgers, I says, and give me the run of the premises, I says, and it shan't cost you a fi'-pun note more in the end, I says. Then if he don't go and tie me down to a price for to make good front wall and all dy-lapidations. And onlest he says wot he means by good, who's to know?... Mortar, John!" John supplied mortar with ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... made Julian laugh immoderately, both from his aunt's notion of the universal autocracy of her will, and from her obvious bewilderment at the technical word "Trials," which had betrayed her unconsciously into a pun, which, of all things, she abhorred. However, he wrote back politely—explained what he meant by "Trials"—begged to be excused for a neglect of her wishes, which was inevitable—and reiterated his promise ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... pun the French painter laughed so much that every one turned and looked at him. He had once painted a famous man in Oxford, and knew ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... through a precocious mannishness and a desire of experimental knowledge, I commenced the habit of tobacco-chewing, and the vice born of a freak, has 'grown with my growth,' till now it holds me as in a 'vice' screwed up and secured by a giant. (Please observe that there's a pun in that last sentence.) Where the conventionalities of society compel me to attidunize my appearance and customs into the stiffness of gentility, I puff the Havana; but when the privacy of my own room or the solitude of the roads and fields permit me to vulgarize to my liking, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... made in French, he responded 'that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the 'Elements'' I have put this pun into 'Beppo', which is 'a fair exchange and no robbery;' for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners (as he owned himself) by repeating occasionally as his own some of the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... aware that we have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents acquainted with ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... allied the System and the cake in a miserable pun. Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the table silent, as if he were going to speak; but he said nothing, and the young gentleman vanished from the conversation in a blush, extinguished by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on a billiard-table. But the most favourite game is the national one of Mora, which they pursue with surprising ardour, and at which they will stake everything they possess. It is a destructive kind of gambling, requiring no accessories but the ten fingers, which are always—I intend no pun- -at hand. Two men play together. One calls a number—say the extreme one, ten. He marks what portion of it he pleases by throwing out three, or four, or five fingers; and his adversary has, in the same instant, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... as a dissyllable, although the line imperatively demands it; and Shakspeare shows that the word was not unusually so pronounced, as he introduces it with the same quantity in the prose dialogue of "Much Ado about Nothing," and makes it the vehicle of a pun which certainly argues that it was familiar to the public ear as ache and not ake. When Hero asks Beatrice, who complains that she is sick, what she is sick for,—a hawk, a hound, or a husband,—Beatrice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... they aint particular now-a-days chunks o' cabbages, and scarcity, and pun'kin, and that all the sass ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... recompense wished for by a French monk: "Detur pro pen scriptori pulcra puella" ("Let a pretty girl be given to the writer for his pains," or "as a penance") The monks enjoyed puns, as "bibere," a common pun on "vivere." One writer groans thus: "Scribere qui nescit, nullum putat esse laborem" ("Whoso knows not how to write, thinks it is ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... no desire to pun, but since you speak of La Surete,[4] I cannot help noticing that they are blundering terribly over these very affairs. Confound those clumsy fools and their meddling! They will interfere with things which are no concern of theirs—not in ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... that 'last ditch' which the North have so long derided. Should I reach her in safety, and find it true, I will proudly beg permission to triumph or die in that same 'ditch' by her side." The swamp near which he died may be called, without unseemly pun—a truth, not a bon mot—the last ditch of ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... "A pun, Umph? he makes puns, does he? funny boy, funny boy, I daresay. How does the Doctor like that, though? Make puns to him, he'd punish you, Umph? Stupid things puns—made one myself then, though—just like me. Well, give the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... a fool-born jest, as your poor friend Erskine used to say to you when you escaped from his good advice under the fire of some silly pun. You smoke a cigar after dinner, and I never check you—drink tea, too, which is loss of time; and then, instead of writing me one other page, or correcting those you have written out, you rollick into the woods ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and he can no more subsist without his fun than could a former Mayor of this city. He ventures to allude in this solemn document to the management of the New York and New Haven Railroad Company, as 'the good bishop and his directors;' makes a first rate pun on the names of two citizens; and says to the Aldermen, 'And now we have, like the Arabs, only to 'fold our tents and silently steal away,' congratulating ourselves that this is the only stealing which has been performed by this honorable body.' Mr. Barnum's administration ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... I think this is an excellent, though unintentional, pun. "Pudor" is Spanish for "shame," but this meaning makes the sentence difficult to read (at best), although it does convey the intent. I think that the word intended is "powder," but left the original in case I ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... and sometimes means the Key. Our Author in this Section is fond of a Pun, which cannot well be translated. Tono is sometimes writ Tuono and Tuono signifies Thunder; therefore the Ignorant answers, he knows no other Tuono but that which is preceded ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... Greene's reputation as an author, how publishers were ready to outbid one another for the very dregs of his wit. Thomas Brabine was but voicing the general opinion when, in some verses prefixed to Menaphon, he wrote, condescending to an inevitable pun, but also to a less excusable ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... what the heroic look had meant, and her respect for it was great. Its intention had not been to suggest inclusion of George and Kathryn in her pun, it had only with pure justice put it to her to ask herself what her own personal decision in such a ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... screaming hare; but permitted those who had lost their all in supporting his father's cause, to pine in misery and want. He would give to a painted harlot a thousand pounds for a loathsome embrace, and to a player or buffoon a hundred for a trumpery pun, but would refuse a penny to the widow or orphan of an old Royalist soldier. He was the personification of selfishness; and as he loved and cared for no one, so did no one love or care for him. So little had he gained the respect or affection of those who surrounded him, that after his body had ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... remained with him. But it would not, for I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life. If I had been full-grown, of course he would have been right; but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... bun. Can cen cin con cun. Dan den din don. dun. Fan fen fin fon fun. Guan guen guin guon gun. Han hen hin hon hun. Jan jen jin jon jun. Lan len lin lon lun. Man me min mon mun. Nan nen nin non. nun. Pan pen pin pon pun. Qua quen quin quon qun. Ran ren rin ron run. San sen sin son su. Tan ten tin ton tun. Uan uen. uin uon. uun. Xan xen xin xon xun. Yan yen yin yon yun. ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... roses, a glance at a pun, A toss of old powder, a glint of the sun, They meet in the volume ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... at length was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the spiteful squib and pun The girls were ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... them all that sat there, if ever he had opportunity, but if he had liberty for a time, that he might take the engagement before he went out: upon which Cromwell said, 'I never knew that the ENGAGEMENT [Footnote: Cromwell probably meant to pun upon this word.—In Ireland, "engagement" means an ISSUE; "an engagement in the neck," arm, &c., i.e., an issue in those places.] was a medicine for the scorbutic.' They, hearing their General say so, thought it obliged ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... first preparing for United Planets employment and then in working for the organization, Ronny Bronston had never been in the Octagon Building. He'd seen photographs, Tri-Di broadcasts and he'd heard several thousand jokes on various levels from pun to obscenity about getting around in the building, but he'd never been there. For that matter, he'd never been in Greater Washington before, other than a long ago tourist trip. Population Statistics, his department, had its main ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Senator had so many tried and trusty friends. Another prominent lawyer was Matt. Carpenter, of Wisconsin, one side of whom as described by Charles Sumner when he called him a "jester," while Mr. Edmunds, by a ready pun, as aptly described the other side of him by declaring that the Senator from Massachusetts probably meant a "sug-gester." Retaining the dragoon swagger, which he had acquired at West Point, a jovial nature, indifferent to the decorum of public life, he seemed to have been tossed ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... tongue. (He goes to the door and calls.) Mrs. Farrell! (Returning, and again addressing the Orderly.) Civil rights don't mean the right to be uncivil. (Pleased with his own wit.) Almost a pun. ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... scratched a section of wire bare. He laughed to himself as he slipped the little microphone out of his left ear. Now he was half deaf as well as half lame—he was literally giving himself to this cause. He would have to remember the pun to tell Alec Diger later, if there was a later. Alec had a ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... important restrictions: In accordance with Statutes of 1883, Chapter 268, any officer, agent, or servant of any corporation or association, who confers, or authorizes [15] to be conferred, any diploma or degree, shall be pun- ished by a fine not less than five hundred dollars and not more ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... what you're talking about!" he says. "But I fancy it's a pun of some sort! Very well, then, what did ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... backs upon this cold, inhospitable New York and set up their household gods in the "City of Brotherly Love." The city of Penn, he added, was the place for one of his calling—laughing as he spoke, at the feeble pun—but there was new hope and life in the laugh. In Penn's city, even if disappointments should come they would be able to bear them, for how should human beings suffer in the "City of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... his mother christened. It was done. They called her Molly. [Footnote: The Indians pronounce the word Marie Mahli or Molly. Mahlinskwess, "Miss Molly," sounds like Mon-in-kwess, a woodchuck. Hence this very poor pun.] Therefore to this day all woodchucks are called Molly. They went down to the shore; to please the king Glooskap drew all the ships into the sea again. So the king gave him what he wanted, and he returned home. Since that time white men have ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... two years in America. Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania. Archbishop Ryan's Latin pun. The Mohonk Conference and President Hayes. Excursion with Andrew Carnegie to Mexico, California, and Oregon. Meetings with Cornell students. Cathedral of Mexico. Our reception by President Porfirio Diaz and his ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... pour out again,—but you, the stranger, do make the best of your way out, with no preparation at all; whereupon you infallibly put your foot (and half your leg) into a river, really that, of rainwater—that's a Bora (and that comment of yours, a justifiable pun!) Such things you get in Italy, but better, better, the best of all things you do not (I do not) get those. And I shall see you on Wednesday, please remember, and bring you the rest of the poem—that you should like it, gratifies me more than I will try to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Henares, and acknowledging that his own reign had received both benefit and glory from it. The people of Alcala punningly said, the church of Toledo had never had a bishop of greater edification than Ximenes; and Erasmus, in a letter to his friend Vergara, perpetrates a Greek pun on the classic name of Alcala, intimating the highest opinion of the state of science there. The reclining statue of Ximenes, beautifully carved in alabaster, now ornaments his sepulchre in the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Lord Gower said:—"Mr. Attorney, you seem to be very lukewarm for your party." He replied:—"My Lord, I never was lukewarm for my party, nor ever was but of one party!"' Walpole's Letters, ii. 140. Mr. Croker assumes that Johnson here 'attempted a pun, and wrote the name (as pronounced) Go'er. Johnson was very little likely to pun, for 'he had a great contempt for that species of wit.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... in the University Church, "a particular part," says the Westminster Review, "is appropriated to the heads of the houses, and is called Golgotha therefrom, a name which the appearance of its occupants renders peculiarly fitting, independent of the pun."—Am. ed., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... rattle, nor to know to how many idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity will lead. Her own family were plain, matter-of-fact people who seldom aimed at wit of any kind; her father, at the utmost, being contented with a pun, and her mother with a proverb; they were not in the habit therefore of telling lies to increase their importance, or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next. She reflected on the affair for some time in much perplexity, and was more ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... explained in an incredible way by Ewald according to the national pun of Genesis x. as derived from Patah, "he who opens or spreads." It is really from Yaphat, "to be ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... sometimes supported by canting figures in full. This Mark, with variations, was also employed by Philippe and Guillaume le Noir, the work of the three men covering a period of nearly 100 years. The device of Gilles or Gillet Couteau, Paris, 1492, is apparently a double pun, first on his Christian name, the transition from which to oeillet being easy and explaining the presence of a pink in flower, and secondly on his surname by the three open knives, in one of which the end of the blade is broken. It was almost inevitable that both Denis Roce or Ross, aParis bookseller, ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... acquisition, and inquires where he got it. Evidently the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it "around here somewhere." Evidently the friend contracts to help him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly antic (pun not intended), then take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions. Presently they take a rest and confer together. They decide that something is wrong, they can't make out what. Then they go at it again, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Bonaparte listened coldly, and the conversation flagged. In despair she blurted out, "General, what woman could you love the most?" "My own," was the stinging reply. ("Quelle femme?" "La mienne.") Woman and wife being the same word in French, Napoleon's retort was a disdainful pun. "Very well; but which would esteem you the highest?" she persisted. "The best housekeeper." "Yes, I understand; but which one would be for you the foremost among women?" "She who should bear the most children, madame," was the icy rejoinder, as the harried ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... I, "is that your husband's portrait on the back of the sign?" (there was a picture of a stag with antlers on the reverse of the poetical swing-board, either intended as a pictographic pun upon the name of "Deer," or as a hint to sportsmen of good ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... is he, who in one language read, Has one eternal jingling in his head, At night, at morn, in bed, and on the stairs ... Talks flights to grooms, and makes lewd songs at pray'rs His Pride, a Pun: a Guinea his Reward, His Critick ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass that ever showed any disposition to be courteous to me. This one opened his head wide and laughed like a demon; or like a maniac who was consumed with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate the rest of the wild creatures of Australia, but this one will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Trust your lives)—Ver. 15. He seems to pun upon the word "capita," as meaning not only "the life," but "the head," in contradistinction to "the feet," mentioned in the next line. As in l. 2 we find that he came to a place where he was not known, we must suppose that the Cobbler ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... old gentleman. "Didn't mean it for a pun, I hope? Never could endure puns! So you came down yesterday, young gentleman, did you? And where may you ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... fact that they were quite utterly gone. A thorough scrutiny of my surroundings, which I conducted with the aid of my late sleeping companion, merely served to confirm this belief, the search being bootless. I have no intention of making a pun here. Puns are to me vulgar, and hence odious. I mean bootless in the ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... said Timon; but Apemantus stayed a while longer and told him he had a passion for extremes, which was true. Apemantus even made a pun, but there was no good laughter to ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... surging heads below. Some asked if Calcraft did the "job," and others volunteered sketches of Calcraft's life. One man boasted that he had taken a pot of beer with him, and another added that the hangman's children and his own went to school together. "He pockets," said the man, "two-pun ten for every one he drops, besides his travelling expenses, and he has put away three hundred and twenty folks. He is a clever fellow, is Calcraft, and he is going ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... wot Mr. Bolter would sell 'er for, if at all. But 'e paid four thousand pun, laid down at the stables where she was kep' after the smash of the Bellethorne family. She's got a pedigree longer than some lord's families, and 'er track record was what brought Mr. Lewis Bolter to Hengland when she was quietly put on ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... a pun, which she herself has said is the lowest form of humor. The dig at my figure was unkind, also, and unworthy of her. I ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Colonel Quarrier. "No pun intended. A good man in a rush at the head of his platoon, but for ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... feeler, brings half the entertainment along with him. This brings us to notice Christmas, a Poem, by Edward Moxon, full of ingenuousness and good feeling, in Crabbe-like measure; but, captious reader, suspect not a pun on the poet of England's hearth—for a more unfortunate name than Crabbe we do ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks, And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve,[8] familiar toad. Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, In pun, or politics, or tales, or lies. Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. His wit all see-saw, between that and this, Now high, now low, now make up, now miss, And he himself one vile antithesis. Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... "Bore." Never pun on this word. It is never done in really good sporting society. But you can make a few remarks, here and there, about the comparative merits of twelve-bore and sixteen-bore. Choose a good opening for telling your story of the man who shot with a fourteen-bore gun, ran short of cartridges ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... father once said to his son, "The next time you make up a pun, Go out in the yard And kick yourself hard, And I will ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... bad pun if I say P. P. see," pointing to Paul, who was coming from the cabin attended by Captain Truck. The latter was conversing warmly, gesticulating towards the corvette, and squeezing his ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... week to office-boys. That's five 'pun' in your money, I believe. But, meanwhile, now that I'm in London, I have some business with Mr. Peebleby." Mitchell produced an American silver dollar and forced it into the boy's hand, whereupon the latter blinked in a dazed manner, then hazarded the opinion that Mr. Peebleby might be at leisure ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... which shaft took immensely, as proved by the loud guffaws and low chuckles that echoed through the beautiful forest whose branches shaded us from the August sun. His reputation as a wit of the first water was firmly established, and every pun and jest thereafter succeeding was crowned by the halo of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... say that his heart is not in his theme—that he stands detached from it—still, his sympathies are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking, antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised work appeals, primarily, to the taste and the ear: always, perhaps, to the head rather than to the heart. There ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... resemblance, likeness, similitude, semblance; affinity, approximation, parallelism; agreement &c 23; analogy, analogicalness^; correspondence, homoiousia^, parity. connaturalness^, connaturality^; brotherhood, family likeness. alliteration, rhyme, pun. repetition &c 104; sameness &c (identity) 13; uniformity &c 16; isogamy^. analogue; the like; match, pendant, fellow companion, pair, mate, twin, double, counterpart, brother, sister; one's second self, alter ego, chip of the old block, par nobile fratrum [Lat.], Arcades ambo^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... priestcraft. Who that has read, and thought, and travelled and studied the manuscripts hidden away in the old monasteries of Armenia and Syria, believes that the Saviour of the world ever condescended to 'pun' on the word Petrus, and say, 'On this Rock (or stone) I will build my Church,' when He already knew that He had to deal with a coward ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... a fush like that for twa pun'!" cried Tavish again; and, as Kenneth stepped down into the water, gaff in hand, waded ashore, and ran downward among the rocks, dripping like an otter, Tavish slowly waded to bank, drawing the line slowly and carefully, and ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... out any more wi' t' dorgs. Let 'em bide at home, I'll take 'em oot when they need it. If Bess takes it into her head to pin a coo there might be trouble, an I doan't want trouble. Her last litter o' pups brought me a ten pun note, and if they had her oop at 'a court and swore her life away as a savage brute, which she ain't no way, it would pretty nigh break ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... for old mahogany than dull green. Golden brown is handsome with it, and certain shades of blue, but there is something about the green with antique furniture that seems literally to give it a soul. Never had our possessions shown to such an advantage (no pun intended, though they did shine) and never, we flattered ourselves, had the old house been more fittingly appointed. With the pictures and shades put up, the rugs put down, and the fires lit, it seemed to us just ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mean to say the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in this material age, When school boys trample on the Inspir'd Page, When coblers prove by syllogistick pun The soal they mend, and that of man are one; 'Twere waste of time to check the Muses' speed, For all the whys and wherefores of their creed; To show how prov'd the juices are the same That feed the body, and the ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... Darkness had now almost left us, and on April 28 we travelled nearly throughout the night in a dim daylight, arriving the next morning at a small village of three huts called Yugetamil. "And it's about time," murmured Harding, on hearing the name. But the atrocious pun was justly received in silence. About fifteen miles east of this we sighted mountains, perhaps thirty miles to the southward, known to the Tchuktchis as the Puk-tak range. The highest peak, Mount Uruni, about 3000 feet high, was visible ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... jus' log cabins, and dey cooked on fireplaces jus' lak at de big house. Marster didn't have many Niggers, but us had plenty somepin' t'eat. He had a big gyarden whar he raised mos' evvything: corn, 'taters, cabbages, peas, onions, collard greens, and lots of pun'kins. When de mens plowed up de 'taters us chillun had to go 'long and put 'em in baskets. De bestes' times was hog killin' times. Us chillun wukked den. Dey hung up de hogs all night and nex' day us cut 'em, put 'em down in salt, and cooked up de lard. Us chillun ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... upon the others, as if this medieval pun were both startling and original. It was plain that he wholly and inanely approved ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... internal and external economy of his realm; he restored the caste-divisions, and carried fire and sword into the lands of his enemies. He transported many captives to Egypt; fortified his eastern frontier; and built, in the Gulf of Suez, a fleet of large and small ships, in order to traffic with Pun and the "Holy Land,"[EN46] and to open communication with the "Incense-country" and with the wealthy shores of the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Barnard(20) I never see. Walls will certainly be stingier for seven years, upon pretence of his robbery. So Stella puns again; why, 'tis well enough; but I'll not second it, though I could make a dozen: I never thought of a pun since I left Ireland.—Bishop of Clogher's bill? Why, he paid it to me; do you think I was such a fool to go without it? As for the four shillings, I will give you a bill on Parvisol for it on t'other side of this paper; ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... been already studying law, for at least by 1709 (we cannot tell how much earlier) he was "by trade an Attorney."[8] It seems likely that various touches in the comedies reflect his training for this calling. In The Humour of the Age, Pun and Quibble, the principal fops, are a pair of articled law-clerks who detest green-bags and (it comes out at one point) are collaborating on a play. (Readers of the present reprint will note, also, that the money which Master ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... the body. This little joke is purely a professional one. It must go no farther. I am afraid the public thinks uncharitably of undertakers, and would consider it a proof that Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the man who would make a pun would pick a pocket. Well; we all try to do the best we can for ourselves—everybody else as well as undertakers. Burials may be expensive, but so is legal redress. So is spiritual provision; I mean the maintenance of all our reverends and right reverends. I am ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... phraseology; vocabulary. Associated Words: glossary, glossarist, glossography, glossology, glossologist, lexicology, lexicologist, etymology, etymologist, etymologize, neology, lexicography, terminology, paronomasia, pun, punning, onomatopoeoea, syncope, syncopation, literal, literally, literalism, transliteration, verbal, verbalist, verbalism, battology, logomachy, logomachist, verbarium, apocope, kyriology, metonomy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... con'tact nos'tril cur'ry pun'gent for'est prod'uct ful'crum rus'tic hob'by prob'lem hud'dle rub'bish loft'y ros'ter pub'lic sulk'y log'ic tor'rent pub'lish sul'try af'flux bank'rupt kin'dred scrib'ble am'bush cam'phor pick'et trip'let ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... a pun worthy of Milton's worst prose. Or he might have twitted him with "a sequent king who seeks." As for the sh sound, a poet could hardly have found it ungracious to his ear ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Marchioness de Bouille, said that he had made her rich, and that it was to him she owed her great wealth; and further, that one day having taken her to a pretty country seat which belonged to him, she praised its beauty, saying "c'etait un beau lieu"; he replied by a pun on a man's name, saying that he knew another Baulieu who had enabled him to make a fortune of five hundred thousand crowns. He also said to Jadelon, sieur de la Barbesange, when posting with him from Paris, that the Countess de Saint-Geran ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said the gate-keeper, as our heroine left the yard, and then laughed as though he had committed a pun that would immortalize him from ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... would have missed him," said Mark, who, even upon so serious an occasion, could not resist the temptation to make a pun. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... at all, but is a play upon the name of Bishop Bloet,—the horn being intended to suggest "Blow it!" It seems hardly possible to credit the mediaeval wit with no keener sense of humour than to perpetrate such a far-fetched pun. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... Billy here, or one of the marabous, as he stands with his shoulders humped up about his head, and make a joke. He won't see it. He will lift his eyebrows with a certain look of contempt, and continue to cogitate—about nothing. If the joke is a very bad pun—such a frightful pun that even a stork will see and resent it—perhaps he will chatter his beak savagely, with a noise like the clatter of the lid on an empty cigar-box; but he will continue his sham meditations. "Ah, my friend," he seems to say, "you are empty ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... humour and the nicest tact, of infinite sleights and evasions, of a picked phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry.' He had the mind of a harlequin; his wit was acrobatic, and threw somersaults. He took in a character at a glance, and threw a pun at you as dexterously as a fly-fisher casts his fly over a trout's nose. 'How finely,' says Hazlitt, in his best and heartiest mood; 'how finely, how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the "Southampton!" Poor and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... forcibly, and on reflection I found that I never knew nor heard of one, though I have once or twice heard a woman make a single detached pun, as I have known a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... next. Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. Their nutriment for their brief existence is the intellectual atmosphere of the bystanders: or this last, is the fine slime of Nilus—the melior Lutis,—whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as the sol pater to their equivocal generation. A pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack with it; you can no more transmit it in its pristine flavour, than you can send a kiss.—Have you not tried in some instances to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has it answered? Not but it was new ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... you," he said, and looked round the court with a smile. But no one spoke. "It's a pun," he added in a fierce tone, then ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... this pun, the amiable clergyman retired, unconscious, I presume, of his prosaic effect upon the atmosphere of the region. With this intrusion of the commonplace, I suffered an eclipse of faith as to Evangeline, and was not sorry to have my attention ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... injury of public business. He assigned as the cause of his arrival the need of a royal letter to authorize the continuance of legal process in the Duchy of Cornwall, and to check the waste of royal woods and parks within it. Unmannerly James is said by Aubrey to have received him with a poor rude pun on his name: 'Rawly! Rawly! true enough, for I think of thee very rawly, mon.' Isaac D'Israeli credits the story. He superfluously thinks it settles, as without better authority than the King's broad Scotch it certainly ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... a charming smile. I explained the pun, and made her laugh. I told her amusing stories, and let her know the effect that her beauty had produced on me, and that I hoped time would soften her heart to me. The acquaintance was made, and thenceforth ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... human understanding, condemned in the passages from the distinguished moralist of the last century and the illustrious historian of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as a PUN. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a pun, and much nearer than modern punsters often get it," continued Mr. Mapps. "Ghent, in former days, had the reputation of being a turbulent city, and its people were bold and warlike. They have always been forward in asserting and defending their liberties; and you will find ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin' to go weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten shilling a pun'. Us had it when us were sick—which wasna' often. We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again wi' ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... have taken up as an order for instant execution. This he performed upon the spot, plunging his dagger repeatedly into Osorio, or, as Hulderico Schmidel has it, 'sewing him up with cuts' ('cosiendole a punaladas'). This murder or execution — for who shall tell when murder finishes and its legal counterpart begins? — rendered Don Pedro very unpopular with all the fleet; for, as Schmidel has it in his history,* 'the soldiers loved Osorio.' To be loved by the soldiers was the only ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... suppose you do know Howe," answered Horne, with a smile, which indicated that he enjoyed even a sickly pun. "I should think you had known him ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... of pun on the Hebrew word 'Adam' or red earth, common in Donne's age, but unworthy of Donne, who was worthy to have seen deeper into the Scriptural sense of the 'ground,' the Hades, the multeity, the many 'absque numero el infra numerum', ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... word of unknown origin, signifies some question or statement in which some hidden and fanciful resemblance is involved, the answer often depending upon a pun; an enigma is a dark saying; a paradox is a true statement that at first appears absurd or contradictory; a problem is something thrown out for solution; puzzle (from oppose) referred originally to the intricate arguments by which disputants opposed each other in the old ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the month of ripening and fulfilment, was called [Greek] in some parts of Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with its memory of Saturn's golden days, was named [Greek]. The sickle of Cronus, the sickle of harvest-time, works in well with this explanation, and we have a kind of pun in Homer which points in the direction of Preller's derivation ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Like them, too, it is altogether removed from utility in the struggle for life, and appears sporadically in a very small percentage of the population; the majority being, as is well known, totally unable to say a witty thing or make a pun even to save ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... CLINCH. A pun or quibble. To clinch, or to clinch the nail; to confirm an improbable story by another: as, A man swore he drove a tenpenny nail through the moon; a bystander said it was true, for he was on the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... laughed Lopez, delighted at his ability to pun in English, and making a motion with one hand ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... the right Course, have indeed the Pretence of being natural; but they ought always to lead us to something brilliant or poignant, in order to justify their Deviation; and not to end only at a ridiculous PUN, void of ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... broad and huge, With every well-known subterfuge! If bald and gray And thin, still say You're only thirty: don't be crushed; But when your voice shakes o'er a pun, Be off ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... on my travel shelf. It is Knight's "Cruise of the Falcon." Nature was guilty of the pun which put this soul into a body so named. Read this simple record and tell me if there is anything in Hakluyt more wonderful. Two landsmen—solicitors, if I remember right—go down to Southampton Quay. They pick up a long-shore youth, and they embark in a tiny boat in which they put ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nibble" and begs for silence, which at once supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating pun, after the manner of a newspaper man, and "Billy Ivins swears he will kill ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett |
