"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 College ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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
... of the Music Halls, and in answer to a question of Mr. BOLTON's, "we cannot do a wreck. (Laughter.)" Mr. WOODALL: "Without being wrecked in the attempt. (Renewed laughter.)" Oh, witty WOODALL! Why, encouraged by this applause, he may yet be led on to make a pun on his own name, and say, "Would all were like him!" or some such merry jest. The proceedings in this Committee were becoming a trifle dull, but it is to be hoped that they may yet hear something still more sparkling from the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... "The man who writ this wretched pun," says Mr D., "would have picked your pocket:" which he proceeds to shew not only bad in itself, but doubly so on so solemn an occasion. And yet, in that excellent play of Liberty Asserted, we find something very much resembling a pun in the mouth of ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... iv. p. 1276.) A specimen of the wit and malice of the people is preserved in the Greek Anthology, (l. ii. c. 5, p. 188, edit. Wechel,) although the application was unknown to the editor Brodaeus. The nameless epigrammatist raises a tolerable pun, by confounding the episcopal salutation of "Peace be to all!" with the genuine or corrupted name of the bishop's concubine: I am ignorant whether the patriarch, who seems to have been a jealous lover, is the Cimon of a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... first book 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
... 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, at once pungent and good-humoured. Garrick is smartly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... artificial-looking sort of beauty, voluptuous yet cold, which, the more it is contemplated, the more it troubles and haunts the mind. Round the lady's neck is a gold chain with little gold lozenges at intervals, on which is engraved the posy or pun (the fashion of French devices is common in those days), "Amour Dure—Dure Amour." The same posy is inscribed in the hollow of the bust, and, thanks to it, I have been able to identify the latter as Medea's portrait. I often examine ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... two Courtiers, whom the Usurper had sent to dive into his Secret, is very natural and just, because his chief Business was to baffle their Enquiries, as he does also in another Scene, (p. 304.) where his falling into a sort of a Pun upon bringing in the Pipe, is a great Fault, for it is too low and mean for Tragedy. But our Author in this (as in all his Pieces) is glad of any Opportunity of falling in with the prevailing Humour of the Times, which ran into false Wit, and a constant endeavour ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... Charles Lamb are lavish in their praise of his conversational powers. Hazlitt says that no one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in a half-dozen half-sentences as he did. "He always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening." Lamb was undoubtedly "matchless as a fireside companion," inimitable as a table-talker, "great at the midnight hour." The "wit-combats" at his Wednesday-evening parties were waged with scarcely inferior skill and ability to those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... had that grim reception in the other world which Shakspeare's squib foreboded for him. By-the-by, till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pronunciation, I never understood that the point of those ill-natured lines was a pun. "'Oho!' quoth the Devil, ''tis my John a' Combe!'"—that is, "my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of description, for it was here that the pasquinades were published, by affixing them to a pedestal at the corner of the Palazzo Braschi. And one of Pasquino's bitterest jests was directed against Olimpia Maldachini. Her name was cut in two, to make a good Latin pun: 'Olim pia, nunc impia,' 'once pious, now impious,' or 'Olimpia, now impious,' as one chose to join or separate the syllables. Whole books have been filled with the short and pithy imaginary conversations between Marforio, the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... interest in the language of both. But to me, who had no pretensions to be so critical, my companions seemed to form a very happy mixture of good-breeding and liberal information, with a disposition to lively rattle, pun, and jest, amusing to a grave man, because it is what he himself can ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... finished by a cap at the impost level of the triforium, and the later shaft was brought down and finished by the rebus of Bishop Lyhart, the constructor of the vault. This rebus should be noticed; it is a pun in stone, with its hart lying in water. It will also be noticed that the outer arches of the triforium are ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... 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 ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... edge of his wineglass, "that's the range of his intellect,—only it had never any thing half so good in it." I quote this merely as one of the average bons-mots which made the small change of his ordinary conversation. He would pun, too, in talk, which he scarcely ever did in writing. Thus he extemporized as an epitaph for his friend Charles Knight, "GOOD NIGHT!"—When Mrs. Glover complained that her hair was turning gray,—from using essence of lavender (as she said),—he asked her "whether it wasn't essence of thyme?" On ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... their old-time pun upon the foreman's name. He got to his feet and approached. "It does me good," ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... seen and known of Puritan affairs, being in somewhat more lively strain. But lively was an adjective to which Mistress Anne had a rooted objection. Her contemporaries indulged in an occasional solemn pun, but the only one in her writings is found in the grim turn on Laud's name, in the "Dialogue" just quoted, in which is also a sombre jest on ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... steir my heid for a plain, auld ex-elder that, tak him the way he taks himsel,' 's just aboot as honest as he can weel afford, an' but for a wheen auld scandals, near forgotten noo, is a pairfec'ly respectable and thoroughly decent man. Or if I fashed wi' him ava', it wad be kind o' handsome like; a pun'-note under his stair door, or a bottle o' auld, blended malt to his bit marnin', as a teshtymonial like yon ye ken sae weel aboot, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... For the rhyming pun, given by a member of The Mosaic Club, and quoted in the third chapter of this book, the author is indebted to T. C. DeLeon's ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... holiday, and the streets all along the line of the splendid procession were lined with people half wild with loyal excitement, shouting and waving hats and handkerchiefs. It may have been on this day that Lord Albemarle got off his famous pun. On the Queen saying to him, "I wonder if my good people of London are as glad to see me as I am to see them?" he replied by pointing to the letters "V. R." "Your Majesty can see their loyal ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... 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 of joining his brothers, as early as was feasible, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... generality of mankind have agreed in supposing it possessed nothing remarkable but dulness and obstinacy. Lucian exercised his genius on a fly; and Erasmus has dignified Folly in his Encomium Moriae, which, for the sake of the pun, he inscribed to Sir Thomas More. The subject of Michael Psellus is a Gnat; Antonius Majoragius took for his theme Clay; Julius Scaliger wrote concerning a Goose; Janus Dousa on a Shadow; and Heinsius (horresco referens) eulogized a Louse. This last animal ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... non teneatur" ("Let wine be given to the writer; let it not be withheld"). Here is the 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
... interested attention the painter has portrayed with great skill, knowledge of character, and consequent variety and truth of expression. Behind the Preacher stands Death, and, with a kind of grotesque practical pun, holds the jaw of a skeleton over his head, as far more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... drink from the river Neda." Consequently, all goats were driven from the banks of this river; but one day, The[)o]clos observed that the branches of a fig tree bent into the stream, and it immediately flashed into his mind that the Messenian word for fig tree and goat was the same. The pun or equivoke will be better understood by an English reader if for goat we read ewe, and bear in mind that yew is to the ear ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Grandma's 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 know ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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 other ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... matter how deliberately or with what difficulty you approach that part of your speech where the fun is to be introduced—yet, when that point is reached there must be no hesitation. It is well to memorize carefully the very words which express the pun, or the flash of wit or humor which is the climax of the story. The story itself may be found in such a manual as this, or in some volume ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... A poor pun started another vein. "You must hear some of Miss Cobbe's puns," said Miss Hosmer, and they were so daringly, glaring bad, as to be very good. When lame from a sprain, she was announced by a pompous ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... years, sor. Never did finish my term an' get my papers. Often's the time 'e's begged me to do it, Mr. Madden. 'E'd say, ''Enry, me boy, w'y don't ye finish your term and git a screw o' sixteen pun' per, ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... fire. Uncle Fountain, like most Englishmen, could take in a pun by the ear, but wit only by the eye. "Do you remember when Mrs. Bazalgette put you into the linen ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... is certainly intended as a pun upon the names of two news-venders or corranto-coiners of the day. Nathaniel Butter, the publisher of "The certain Newes of this present Week," lived at the Pyde-Bull, St. Austin's-gate, and was the proprietor of several of the intelligencers, from 1622 to about 1640. Nicholas ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... your analogical pun, what does it amount to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, pretty much ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... essentially poetical. Some, indeed, are either expanded metaphors or metaphors touched by genius into poetry. The alliterative proverbs and maxims of the Talmud and Midrash are less easily illustrated. Sometimes they enshrine a pun or a conceit, or depend for their aptness upon an assonance. In some of the Talmudic proverbs there is a spice of cynicism. But most of them show a genial ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... ben bin bon 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. Zan ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... 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 River. Dr. Brinton is notoriously ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... as much as to say, the tough old knight hath a habit of swearing," said the keeper, grinning at a pun, which has been repeated since his time; "but who can help it? it comes of use and wont. Were you now, in your bodily self, to light suddenly on a Maypole, with all the blithe morris-dancers prancing around it to the merry pipe and tabor, with bells jingling, ribands fluttering, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... bad attempt at a pun," said "C." "I trust, however, you will not desert me, now your curiosity is satisfied, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... the head of the stairs and my object was to carry her down to the lower story. The stairs were narrow, and by keeping up a good watch, I contrived to force him to give ground, using his spouse as a sort of battering-RAM—not to perpetrate a pun at the expense of the genders—which, I happened to know, had always been successful in making him give ground on all previous occasions. His habitual deference for the dame, assisted me in my purpose. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Man makes a pun. Jeremiah "rolls" out of camp. Elfreda discovers a bear. "He is eating up our food." With the bear's assistance Miss Briggs succeeds in lassoing him. The Overland ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... of being funny is grown old-fashioned," said Cutter. "Fifty or sixty years ago, a hundred years ago, when a man wanted to be very bitingly sarcastic, he would compose a criticism upon his enemy which was only a long string of abominable puns; each pun was printed in italics. That was thought to ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Street close packed with the stuff of human life, homespun and drab enough, but not altogether profitless, may be, to turn over and examine. So close packed was it that there was scarce breathing space. It was only at immemorial intervals that our pauper alien made a pun, but one day he flashed upon the world the pregnant remark that England was well named, for to the Jew it was verily the Enge-Land, which in German signifies the country without elbow room. Moses Ansell chuckled softly and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Shallow. Roger was a rare fellow, 'of the driest 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 faint are my sketches compared to his! It was like looking into ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... always think I was preparing for the small-pox. My notion is quite of another nature; the first thing I do is to have a good fire; for what I say is this, if a man is cold in his fingers, it's odds if ever he gets warm in his purse! ha! ha! warm, you take me, Sir? I mean a pun. Though I ought to ask pardon, for I suppose the young lady don't know what I am ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... men make fools of themselves. When Dickens described Mr. Chuckster, Dickens was, strictly speaking, making a fool of himself; for he was making a fool out of himself. And every kind of real lark, from acting a charade to making a pun, does consist in restraining one's nine hundred and ninety-nine serious selves and letting the fool loose. The dullness of the millionaire joke is much deeper. It is not silly at all; it is solely stupid. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... I.16: 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 confessed to ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... I be allowed a pun, To help me through with just this one? I've tried to read Young's Thoughts of Night, But never yet could come ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... notice the commonplace pun, went on to say, "You don't know, Mr. King, what tricks she can play with her voice. I call her a musical ventriloquist. If you want to hear the bell to perfection, ask her to sing 'Toll the ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... of talking of our faults. Let me turn to the more pleasing task of discussing those of the English. In the first place, and as a minor matter of form, I think that English humour suffers from the tolerance afforded to the pun. For some reason English people find puns funny. We don't. Here and there, no doubt, a pun may be made that for some exceptional reason becomes a matter of genuine wit. But the great mass of the English puns that disfigure ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... report of the neighborhood of the Rue de Buffault, where he lived, was a man of exceeding stinginess, possessed of forty thousand francs per annum. A week after the instalment of the charming librarian he was delivered of a pun: ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... a 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, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... inscription (which contained a very singular pun) was erased by the order of Licinius, who claimed some degree of relationship to Philip, (Hist. August. p. 166;) but the tumulus, or mound of earth which formed the sepulchre, still subsisted in the time of Julian. See Ammian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... a little man beside him, and everybody laughed, especially the genial man, who cried out, "Charley Lamb, Charley Lamb, you'll never alter. You would make a pun if you were hanged ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to me? He sends the girl a twenty-pun'-note, and I wish he'd a kep' it. As for t'other, she wouldn't let the girl inside her door! It's here she ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... big as a good-sized hotel," said the Don. "Then," he continued, "there's Bedford ditto again—septennel would do for that; then comes Northampton—they don't want no law there at all." (I leave the obvious pun to anyone who likes to make it). "Then Okeham again—did you ever hear of anyone who came ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... cigar-case, closed it up again and said: "Yes—I think, after that, I SHALL be going, and I am sorry I fail to see the fun of your jokes." Gowing said he didn't mind a joke when it wasn't rude, but a pun on a name, to his thinking, was certainly a little wanting in good taste. Cummings followed it up by saying, if it had been said by anyone else but myself, he shouldn't have entered the house again. This rather unpleasantly terminated what might have been ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... understand what you're talking about!" he says. "But I fancy it's a pun of some sort! Very well, then, what ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... the dialogue incessantly; but the amazed audience could not indorse this rural festival. Jinny, amid the pigs, horses, tea, cucumbers and marmalade, talked in Mr. Zangwill's best style—a style replete with wordplay or pun—but her setting killed her, and she was soon ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... greatest importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert; and when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with his two luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors of a pun; the gentlemen whose business it is to write the Market Reports would ignore ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... retains A splendid shilling: he nor hears with pain New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale; But with his friends, when nightly mists arise To Juniper's Magpie or Town Hall[4] repairs. Meanwhile he smokes and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous or conumdrum quaint; But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And hunger sure attendant upon want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff (Wretched repast!) my meagre corps sustain: Then solitary walk or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff. Regale chilled ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Miss!" said the gate-keeper, as our heroine left the yard, and then laughed as though he had committed a pun that would immortalize him ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... Stuart, and the nonchalance "under difficulties" of "Milord What-then" in Voltaire's Princess of Babylon, where the noble traveller is discovered philosophically reading the news-paper in his carriage after it was overturned. English beauty, ever since the days of Pope Gregory, with his pun about Angles and Angels, has been greatly admired in the south of Europe—not a little, perhaps, on account of the general fairness of its complexion. I once heard a fair-faced English gentleman, who would have been thought rather ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... re-appointed to the same ship. Brahe afterwards made a proper submission for the fault he had committed, at his own court. His conduct reminds us of Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an ambassador—that he is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. A pun ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... preceded it. He was more of a child than his nieces, Madame Surville tells us: "laughed at puns, envied the lucky being who had the 'gift' of making them, tried to do so himself, and failed, saying regretfully, 'No, that doesn't make a pun.' He used to cite with satisfaction the only two he had ever made, 'and not much of a success either,' he avowed in all humility, 'for I didn't know I was making them,' and we even suspected him ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... said Deborah, while talking at supper to her proposed husband, "as is lovely and cheap. One of them suburbs on the line to Essex, where my pretty will live when her husband's frantic par makes it up. Jubileetown's the place, and Victoria Avenue the street. The sweetest cottage at twenty pun' a year as I ever set eyes on. And m'sister as is married to a bricklayer is near to help with ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... About like my own school in Kansas—the high-school principal would have been an undertaker if he'd had more capital.... Gee! principal and capital—might make a real cunning pun out of that if I worked over it a little. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... Tholomyes, with the accent of a man who had recovered his empire, "Come to yourselves. This pun which has fallen from the skies must not be received with too much stupor. Everything which falls in that way is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. The pun is the dung of the mind which soars. The ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... here rendered "barristers," really means "those who bark," which is probably only a pun of the Bard's on cyfarchwyr—"those who address ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... godsend to the Press a few weeks later. Even in June there were leaders, letters, large headlines, leaded type; the Daily Chronicle devoting half its literary page to a charming drawing of the island capital which the new Pall Mall, in a leading article headed by a pun, advised the Government to blow to flinders. I was myself driving a poor but not dishonest quill at the time, and the topic of the hour goaded me into satiric verse which obtained a better place than anything I had yet turned out. I had ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... old man peered at me and asked my errand. I pointed to the print of Mr. Coates, which he gave me for a few shillings, chuckling at the pun upon ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... you fellows to pretend that you know what's going to happen when the quarter-back shouts a lot of numbers to you," observed Amy, hugging his knees and exposing a startling view of crushed-raspberry socks, "but I'm too old a bird—no pun intended this time—to be caught. Besides, I played once for a couple of weeks, and I know that signals didn't mean ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a glance at a pun, A toss of old powder, a glint of the sun, They meet in the volume that ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... the joke which had not long since appeared in Punch, to the effect that Pio "No, No," should rather have been named Pio "Yes, Yes," because, as the doctor explained, he granted everything his subjects asked for. Anything like a pun went straight to Dr ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... member a needle and thread, adding the injunction, "Take this and be thrifty." It is said, I know not with what truth, that it is to commemorate the name of the founder, Robert Egglesfield—by the visible pun, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... daft together," muttered Margery, with uplifted hands, as she hurried away. "It was a very good discourse, no doubt, but to think of folk strippin' themselves like that—a pun'-note, forsooth, near the half of the week's work; ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... means 'Diana's Grove.' Then the next one higher than it, but just beyond it, is called 'Mercy'—in all probability a corruption or familiarisation of the word Mercia, with a Roman pun included. We learn from early manuscripts that the place was called Vilula Misericordiae. It was originally a nunnery, founded by Queen Bertha, but done away with by King Penda, the reactionary to Paganism after St. Augustine. Then comes your uncle's place—Lesser Hill. Though ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... fellows. Always be dead serious with 'Uncle Sim.' That's Mr. Simkins, Greek instructor. If you can look as if you'd lost all your friends and bitten your tongue you'll make a big hit with him. He doesn't know a joke even when it's labelled and can't stand any flippancy. I made a pun in class once; I've forgotten what it was, but it was a bright and scintillant little effort; and Uncle Sim told me I'd end on the gallows. He's never forgotten that and still ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and Gentlemen, open to hinspection, and warranted to bear it. An unusually excellent lot, fit for the sleeping-apartment of a prince, at a price within the means of a pork-butcher. (Laughter.) Oh, it's righteous, Gents. No 'umbug about me. There's quality, if you like. Well worth a ten-pun note. What shall I have the pleasure of saying for this very superior article? 'Ow much for the chest o' drawers? Who bids for the ma'ogany chest? Thirty shillings. Thank you, Sir! Any advance on thirty shillings? Thirty-five! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... people say, and he 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 of whom ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... 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. O you! whom vanity's light bark conveys On fame's mad voyage by the wind of praise, With what a shifting gale your course you ply, For ever sunk too low, or borne too high! Who pants for glory finds but short repose, A breath revives him, or a breath ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... "For a pun like that you ought to be forced to drink a bottle or two of Tosh Elixer!" retorted Bud. "How about ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... pun and song and dance! Our purpose is an essay in romance: An old-world story where such old-world facts As hate and love and death, through four swift acts— Not without gleams and glances, hints and cues, From ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... 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 ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... nicety as 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, at hazard, and without seeing his hand, to throw out as many fingers, as will make ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... life and love of Christ. And here, in this year of grace 635, in the city of Chang-an, and in all the region about the Yellow River, the good priest Thomas the Nestorian, whom the Chinese called O-lo-pun—the nearest approach they could give to his strange Syriac name—had his Christian mission-house, and was zealously bringing to the knowledge of a great and enlightened people the still greater and more ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... by the founder's name and licensing the University to hold land in mortmain for its maintenance. The most learned and by no means the most foolish of our Kings, this same James I., visited the Bodleian in May, 1605. Sir Thomas was not present. There it was that the royal pun was made that the founder's name should have been Godly and not Bodley. King James handled certain old manuscripts with the familiarity of a scholar, and is reported to have said, I doubt not with perfect sincerity, that were he not King James he ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... ourselves with wisdom and understanding, and robe ourselves with true politeness and meekness, and be crowned with the flowers of the 'jenan' (gardens) of knowledge (a pun on the name of the magazine) now opened to us. Let us pluck the fruits of wisdom, lifting up our heads in gratulation and true pride, and remain no longer in that cowardice and avarice which were imputed to the women ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... jeweller made a fortune by the sale of mourning snuff-boxes, whereon the portrait of the young Queen, in a black frame of shagreen, gave rise to the pun: "Consolation in chagrin." All the fashions, and every article of dress, received names expressing the spirit of the moment. Symbols of abundance were everywhere represented, and the head-dresses of the ladies were surrounded by ears of wheat. Poets sang of the new ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Dame Quickly's pun gives us our Carrot, a plant which, originally derived from our wild Carrot (Daucus Carota), was introduced as a useful vegetable by the Flemings in the time of Elizabeth, and has probably been very little altered or improved since the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... in the leaves, but nothing else." The old man turned his head slightly, and replied, "What you see is the badger scratching his neck against a tree; the ticks are evidently tickling him." And he chuckled as he recognised his unintentional pun. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... laughed the 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 ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... or pun, bad, good, or indifferent, was let slip, however much taking it up might interrupt the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... way of seizing on any bizarre incident reported in the morning papers, enfolding it in "funny language," adding a pun, and thus making it his own. He had a cunning mastery of periphrasis, and a telling ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... cleanlier qualities of the people of Japan. Though they followed us about in droves, they never attempted any familiarities; in fact our first overtures were treated with awe-like silence. The only words we understood, in common with them, were "tabac" and "Ya-pun" (Japan); indeed Japan is the beginning and end of their ideas—their one standard of perfection. Everything they noticed about us—watches, biscuit, the buttons on our clothing, our boots even—were all qualified with the word "Ya-pun," in a most admiring and reverential tone. Seemingly the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... fatten fat Thamas Thamson?" Another illustration of the Aberdeen dialect is thus given:—"The Pope o' Rome requires a bull to do his wark, but the Emperor o' France made a coo dee't a'"—a cow do it all—a pun on coup d'etat. A young lady from Aberdeen had been on a visit to Montrose, and was disappointed at finding there a great lack of beaux, and balls, and concerts. This lack was not made up to her by the invitations which ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... 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. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... you kill the Admiral next time he makes a pun, I do not know that just now I need such a service. By to-morrow, though, or the next day, I may think of one. Until then"—she held out her hand—"wait patiently, and ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to work for Stephens and Jarrott. So did my sister-in-law, but I noticed you first. We've often spoken of you, especially after we knew your name was Strange. It seemed to us so strange. That's a pun, isn't it? I often make them. We both thought you were like what Henry—that's Mr. Jarrott's oldest son—might have grown to, if he had been spared to us. We've had a great deal of sorrow—Oh, a great deal! It's weaned my sister-in-law ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... understood; they are frequently enlivened by illuminating figures of rhetoric and by humor, or rendered impressive by the striking way in which they express thought, e.g. "The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion." A pun, digression, or out-of-the-way allusion may occasionally provoke readers, but onlookers have frequently noticed that few wrinkle their brows while reading his critical essays, and that a pleased expression, such as photographers like, is almost certain to appear. He has the rare faculty ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... quite unintentional 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 ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... lewdness; and his jests are insupportably low and illiberal, and fit only for "the dregs of Romulus" to use and to hear; he has furnished examples of every species of true and false wit, even down to a quibble and a pun. Plautus lived in an age when the Romans were but just emerging into politeness; and I cannot forbear thinking, that if he had been reserved for the age of Augustus, he would have produced more perfect plays than even the elegant ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... 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 of which have twenty-two verses ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... was invariably a badge or device forming a pun upon a man's surname. It probably originated in the canting heraldry of earlier days. A large number of rebuses ending in "ton" are based upon a tun or barrel; such are the lup on a ton of Robert Lupton, Provost of Eton 1504, which appears in the spandrils ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... grizzly," explained Harry, "a grizzly bear you know. Dad says he's the biggest he's ever seen and he seems to bear—excuse the pun, please—he seems to bear a charmed life. All the boys on the ranch are crazy to get a shot at him, but they've never ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... ice-chest or in the ice-box?" inquired the King, his humor getting the better of his anger, for he could never let go by an opportunity to make a pun. ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory
... wife will reproach you for being sullen and not speaking to her; perhaps she will say that you are ridiculous, when you have just made a pun; but this is one of the slight annoyances incident to our system; and, moreover, what does it matter to you that the education of women in France is the most pleasant of absurdities, and that your marital obscurantism has ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... habit of "verbal curiosity" and condensation which seduced Milton into punning. Some of his puns are very bad. There is a modern idea that a pun is a thing to laugh at. Milton's puns, like Shakespeare's, give no smallest countenance to this theory. Sometimes he plays with what is merely a chance identity of sound, as ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Olive, heavily condescending to explain, 'I offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You know, it's ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... what it is, Tom," said one of the captains; "I will not have you in my company if you do that again. The man who would make a bad pun and a hackneyed pun in such beautiful scenery as this, would—I don't know what enormity he would not commit. Come ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... thought which they believed to be grave and profitable; but this frivolous stupidity had not been found in any great writer since the time of Rabelais and the time of the Elizabethans. In many of the comic scenes of Shakespeare we have precisely this elephantine ingenuity, this hunting of a pun to death through three pages. In the Elizabethan dramatists and in Browning it is no doubt to a certain extent the mark of a real hilarity. People must be very happy to be ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... of the arrest the prisoner summoned Physi- ology, Materia Medica, and Hypnotism to prevent his pun- 431:15 ishment. The struggle on their part was long. Materia Medica held out the longest, but at length all these assist- ants resigned to me, Health-laws, and I succeeded in get- 431:18 ting Mortal Man into close confinement until ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... "man-evolved Godhead" be an English equivalent?) "Euhemeristic" also found me somewhat on my beam-ends, though explanation is here given; yet I felt I could do without Euhemerus; and you perhaps without the humerous. You can pardon me now; for so bad a pun places me at your mercy indeed. But seriously, simple English in prose writing and in all narrative poetry (however monumental language may become in abstract verse) seems to me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... pun!" the King added in an angry tone, and everybody laughed. "Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about the twentieth time ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the ring of truth when he heard it. His hand was bandaged, and three minutes before he would have been glad to sell the 'mangy old monkey' for ten shillings. Now—'Ho! 'e does, does 'e,' he said, 'then two pun ten's my price. He's not got his fellow that monkey ain't, nor yet his match, not this side of the equator, which he comes from. And the only one ever seen in London. Ought to be in the Zoo. Two pun ten, down on the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... Mary Moody Emerson has it and can write scrap letters. Who has it need never write anything but scraps. Henry Thoreau has it." His humor though a part of this wit is not always as spontaneous, for it is sometimes pun shape (so is Charles Lamb's)—but it is nevertheless a kind that can serenely transport us and which we can enjoy without disturbing our neighbors. If there are those who think him cold-hearted and with but little human sympathy, let them read his letters to Emerson's ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... do you see the pun, mademoiselle?" asked Poiret. "This gentleman calls himself a man of mark because he is a ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... spoil the prayers; or, after keeping meek and mum for a year or so I'd be so wild to laugh that I'd roar right out and break up the whole service. I think I'm the last girl alive to be a Vestal. A Vestal mustn't answer back or make a pun, no matter how good a chance she gets. I just can't help cutting in, if I see a chance; the words come out of my mouth before I know it, and, if I trained myself to keep still and look as mild as a lamb, I'd be boiling inside and sometime I'd burst out with a yell just to relieve my feelings ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... show that Shakespeare is at first unsure of his personage; he fumbles a little; yet the vivacity, the roaring life, is certainly a quality of the original Falstaff, for it attends him as constantly as his shadow; the pun, too, is his, and the phrase "sweet wag" is probably taken from his mouth, for he repeats it again, "sweet wag," and again "mad wag." The shamelessness, too, and the lechery are marks of him, and the love of witty word-warfare, and, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... alone,—all alone. Don't you ever feel as if you should like to have been a pillar-saint in the days when faith was as strong as lye (spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dish-water? (Jerry is looking over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to send, and a disgrace to the University—but never mind.) I often feel as if I should like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,—yes, and have it soaped from top to bottom. Wouldn't it be fun to look down at the bores and the duns? Let us get up ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... now unfortified; its walls, its castles, are level with the ground. But, if I may borrow the pun of which old Peter Heylin is guilty when, describing Paris, Rouen is still a strong city, "for it taketh you by the nose." The filth is extreme; villainous smells overcome you in every quarter, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... bull by the horns, pretending or thinking that genuine feeling can be worthily carried in a pun. So that in his impassioned 'hymn to God the Father', deploring his ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... said the auctioneer, "he isn't hurt: the article belonged to his mother and her sister; the brother-in-law isn't on good terms; so he demanded a public sale. She will get back four pun ten out of it." Here the clerk put in his word. "And there's five pounds paid, I forgot to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... drop left, but thou shouldst have half, if it would serve thee," he said, as he put it to his lips and drained it dry. "'T is the last I have, and eight miles of Lee way still to do!" He laughed at his own pun, and pricked up the horse. Just as the weary animal broke into a trot, the rider pulled rein once more and looked up at a signboard which had attracted his notice by giving a discordant creak as the now ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... most amusingly brought out in "Liffith Lank"; and as the little work makes the reader laugh at the great one, he has no right, perhaps, to ask more of it, or to complain that it trusts too much to the facile pun for its effects, which are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... our hearty task 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
... "Once pun er time there was er bad little girl, an' she wouldn't min' nobody, nor do no way nobody wanted her to; and when her mother went ter give her fyssick, you jes ought ter seen her cuttin' up! she skweeled, an' she ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... tips," broke in Andy, quickly. "We are going to do this free, gratis, for nothing," and at this pun there was another laugh. Then Jack gave the signal, and away the two rowboats started on ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... of unknown origin, probably coined in burlesque imitation of scholastic Latin, as "hocus-pocus" or "panjandrum"), originally a term meaning whim, fancy or ridiculous idea; later applied to a pun or play upon words, and thus, in its usual sense, to a particular form of riddle in which the answer depends on a pun. In a transferred sense the word is also used of any puzzling ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... 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 ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... chipmonastery?" cried Groups. It was a family joke to call the chipmunk's burrow by that name, and though the puppies did not understand the pun ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... to blight my budding career by a poisonous pun like that?" demanded Average Jones with ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the Cyclops outside must be rendered nugatory. Such are the three chief points of the impending problem, which Ulysses has to meet and does meet with astonishing skill and foresight; the Cyclops is blinded, is made helpless by drink, and is befooled by a pun. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... 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. Ha ha! ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw |
