"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been accustomed to pay their debt in sneers and railleries—often in nothing else. The stage character of the tailor is stereotyped from generation to generation; his goose is a perennial pun; and his habitual melancholy is derived to this day from the flatulent diet on which he will persist in living—cabbage. He is effeminate, cowardly, dishonest—a mere fraction of a man both in soul and body. He is represented by the thinnest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... for 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 the dear bright eyes of the Comic Muse!— ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... of laying hand over head on a man." A pun; but an old one. I remember, when Swan[16] made that pun first, he was severely checked ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... word 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 question ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... 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
... which Mr. STANLEY LUPINO bore the brunt, was here and there a little thin, and it is time that somebody let the Management of Drury Lane into the open secret that the pun, as an instrument of mirth, has long been a portion of the dreadful past. Mr. WILL EVANS, as the Baroness Beauxchamps, seldom let himself go, being no doubt held in restraint by a consciousness of his resemblance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... Strange, if I met you fifty years from now. I noticed you when you first began 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 away from the world altogether. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Flippancy is a flower whose roots are often underground in the subconsciousness. Many a man talks sense when he thinks he is talking nonsense; touches on a conflict of ideas as if it were only a contradiction of language, or really makes a parallel when he means only to make a pun. Some of the Punch jokes of the best period are examples of this; and that quoted above is a very strong example of it. The cabman meant what he said; but he said a great deal more than he meant. His utterance contained fine philosophical doctrines ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 bell for ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... for precisely the same reason that it would be good as a pun. The comparison is unintentionally wanting in logic, just as a pun is intentionally so. To make the contrast what it should have been,—to make it coherent, if I may use that term of a ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... But Henry wrote: it will excite me. You know how. In haste. Henry. Greek ee. Better add postscript. What is he playing now? Improvising. Intermezzo. P. S. The rum tum tum. How will you pun? You punish me? Crooked skirt swinging, whack by. Tell me I want to. Know. O. Course if I didn't I wouldn't ask. La la la ree. Trails off there sad in minor. Why minor sad? Sign H. They like sad tail ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... here to contain a pun, the consonantic outline of "Tasht""basin" being the same as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 zen zin ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... he ridiculed in a pun, Luther published a short and pungent reply in Latin and German. He was particularly indignant that this occasion should have been seized to tax his sermon with false doctrine, since the wish he there expressed ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... that are all money. No storied fisherman of Bagdad, catching enchanted princes disguised as fishes in the sea, ever hooked such a treasure as this defendant hooked when he hooked that basket of eels! [Rustling appreciation of the pun among the jury.] If a squirming, twisting, winding, wriggling eel, gentlemen, can be said at any given moment to have a back, we may distinguish this new-found species as the green-back eel. It is a common saying that no man can hold an eel and remain a Christian. I should like to have viewed ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... observed this depreciatory intonation, and throwing himself backwards in his large easy chair, repeated: "An orphan girl," at the same time putting a half angry, half comical expression into his countenance, and perpetrating a pun in what followed: "Yes, many of your Canadian noblesse would bless themselves to have been her father. The poor fellow, it is well he is not here to have overheard you. An orphan girl: true, as you say, I have an orphan girl,—or one ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Tish seldom makes 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 turned ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... provided the opportunity 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 a thing I ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... gossip touching the potency of new influences which had begun with "Asrael" was given fresh fuel by the production of "Diana von Solange." Why an opera which had lain "so lange" (to make an obvious German pun) in the limbo of forgotten things, which, indeed, had never enjoyed a popularity of any kind, though it was thirty or forty years old, should have been resurrected for production in New York was a question well calculated to irritate curiosity and provoke ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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.' Post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... '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 ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... 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 him for ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... to ram down most powerfully cities and towns? [Quid enim magnopere mirandum est si vervecum, in patria valida nascantur cornua quae urbes et oppida arietare valentissime possint? Besides the pun, there is some geographical allusion, or allusion of military history, which it is difficult to make out.] Learn you, already from your early age, to weigh and discern great characters not by force and animal ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... 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 statue ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... when you were a child?" "Na, I didna' cam here when I was a chiel," he replied. "Then what do you mean by 'maistly,' if you have not lived here most of your life?" counsel asked. "Weel, when I cam here I weighed eighty pun, and now I weigh three hundred, so that I maun be maistly a native." [Laughter.] So, perhaps, that "maistly" may be the claim to be a Dutchman which some of us may make, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the use of breaking your head to save him?" said Mrs. Crowl with an unconscious pun. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... subject!" the Queen said, obviously delighted. "What a lovely pun! And how much better because purely unconscious! My, my, Sir Kenneth, I never suspected you of a pointed sense of humor—could you be a descendant of Sir Richard ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... itself to infinity, and never be nearer to the symbolic shape without the help of the shorter. Here is that war and wedding between two contrary forces, resisting and supporting each other; the meeting-place of contraries which we, by a sort of pietistic pun, still call the crux of the question. Here is our angular and defiant answer to the self-devouring circle of Asia. It may be improbable, though it is far from impossible (for the age was philosophical enough) ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... was so tired that any cranny would have been welcome. She was even wearier than she had been when she occupied the outdoor apartment under the park bench where she spent her second night in New York. She called that an "aparkment" and liked the pun so well that she longed to tell her husband. But that would have compelled the telling of her real name, and she did not know him well enough for that yet. She found that she did not know him well enough yet for an increasing number of things. She began to be afraid to have him come ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... eyes I Thereupon, her husband began his dread performance. The patience, the heroic patience, of that dear, good fellow! I have known him explain, and re-explain, for a quarter of an hour, and invariably without success. It might be a mere pun; Mrs. Poppleton no more understood the nature of a pun than of the binomial theorem. But worse was when the jest involved some allusion. When I heard Poppleton begin to elucidate, to expound, the perspiration already on his forehead, I looked at him with ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... more bitter. The Dominican Father Caccini preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" and this wretched pun upon the great astronomer's name ushered in sharper weapons; for, before Caccini ended, he insisted that "geometry is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies." The Church authorities ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Jane,—her blind Garth at the piano, his dear beautiful head bent over the keys, his fingers feeling for that pathetic little notch, to be made by herself, below middle C. She loathed this individual who could make a pun on the subject of Garth's blindness, and, in the back of her mind, Tommy seemed to join the duchess, flapping up and down on his perch and shrieking: "Kick ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... 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 ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... before me. The husband stood at 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. Step by step, however, he disputed my advance; but ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... (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. Ha ha! ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... with the science of Gunter, Jack of all trades that he was, empowered him to perpetrate a fine pun on the United States surveyor-general in California, General Beall. This official acquired in his course so much real estate of the first quality that on a reference being made to it in the President's ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... about under the table. 'Dear me,' said a lady, 'how this creature teases me!' I took it up and put it into my breast-pocket. Mr Wells said, 'That is a pretty nosegay.'—'Yes,' said I, 'it is a dog-rose.' Wilkie's attention, sitting opposite, was called to his friend's pun, but all in vain. He could not be persuaded to see anything in it. I recollect trying once to explain to him, with the same want of success, Hogarth's joke in putting the sign of the woman without a head ('The Good Woman') under the window from which ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... a nice un," chuckled the old man, not above a pun at death's door. "Reglar revellin in it is Knapp, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... boy," drawled Jack. "This—er, what shall I call him?—stopped me to tell me he was going to rub the marks off me, at the same time wittily making a pun on my name. I was just telling him to hurry, or I'd miss ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... is a 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. Shall you ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of this notable scheme, (we mean no pun,) which merits our attention. This new bank and its offices are to sell drafts on each other for a premium, and as the bank itself is to issue no paper, the drafts may be paid for in the notes of the state banks, "only so long as they continue to be redeemed in specie,"—such are the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... manifestly exploited by the company." Such a guest can safely be left quite to himself, unless he is a stranger. As drawing out the people by whom one finds one's self surrounded in society will be treated in a forthcoming essay, I shall not deal with it here further than to tell how a famous pun of Charles Lamb's gave a thoughtful host not only the means of swaying the conversation of the entire table to a subject of universal interest, but as well the means of drawing out a well-informed yet timid girl. Guiding his talk with his near neighbor into a discussion of the pros ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... wi' the upbringing an' edication of un. I mean him to be brought up to a power o' knowledge, for theer's nothin' like it. Doan't you think I be gwaine to shirk doin' the right thing by un', Miller, 'cause it aint so. If 'twas my last fi'-pun' note was called up for larnin' him, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... of Montano that the Negritos have no slaves and know nothing of slavery, the reverse is true, in Zambales at least; so say the Negritos and also the Filipinos who have spent several years among them. The word "a-li'-pun" is used among them to express such social condition. As has been stated, a man caught stealing may become a slave, as also may a person captured from another rancheria, a child left without support, a person under death sentence, or a debtor. It was also stated ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... economist than Boswell, that a country would be made more populous by emigration. "There are bulls enough in Ireland," he remarked incidentally in the course of the argument. "So, sir, I should think from your argument," said Johnson, for once condescending to an irresistible pun. It is recorded, too, that he once made a bull himself, observing that a horse was so slow that when it went up hill, it stood still. If he now failed to appreciate Burke's argument, he made one good ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... my reader has survived this pun, I will now go on to state that it is a common thing in Corea to begin a dinner with sweets, and that another curious custom is for all present to drink out of the same bowl of wine passed round and of course re-filled when empty. The dinner is served on tiny tables ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... as a writer, dry; those who knew his writings will feel that he seldom could have taken in a joke or issued a pun. Maseres was the fourth wrangler of 1752, and first Chancellor's medallist (or highest in classics); his second was Porteus[459] (afterward Bishop of London). Waring[460] came five years after him: he could not get Maseres through the second page of his first book on algebra; ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... 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 be got out ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... their country. Karcher thus signed his marvellously executed grotesques of Bacchiacca which hang in the gallery of tapestries in Florence. (Plates facing pages 48 and 49.) John Rost's fancy led him to pun upon his name by illustrating a fowl roasting on the spit. Karcher had a little different mark in the Ferrara looms, where he went at the call ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... my pocket-book—or rather, to stretch a bad pun till it bursts, my pocket-dictionary—I require the aid of your benevolently-squandered talents for the correction of these proofs. I am, as usual, both idle and busy this morning; so draw pen, and set ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... "I recant," said he, bluntly; and everybody saw what had operated his conversion. That is a pun. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Bon-Mots, be quoted, from one of the Ana, an exquisite instance of flattery in a maid of honour in France, who being asked by the Queen what o'clock it was, answered, 'What your Majesty pleases.' He admitted that Mr. Burke's classical pun upon Mr. Wilkes's being carried on the shoulders of ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... which had 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 of embellishing them afterwards."[*] ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Excellent!" cried Miss Trafford, who was always the first in at the death of a pun. "Yes, indeed they did: poor old Lord Belton, with his rheumatism; and that immense General Grant, with his asthma; together with three 'single men,' and myself, were safely conveyed to that ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the name of the cursores I see the raw material of many sad jokes—whereunto I pray I may never be tempted, but may leave them for an easy exercise for such as have set out upon the shameless career of the irreclaimable pun-flinger. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "Zweigeboren," p. 423, and more instances might be adduced. It is not to be wondered at that such poetizing should often degenerate into the most inane trifling, so that we get such rhyming efforts as that on p. 326 with its pun on the similarity of hima "winter" with hema "gold," Himalaya and himavat with Himmel and Heimat, or that on p. 385 with its childish juxtaposition of the Vedantic term maya, the Greek name Maia, ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... our old English historians write of Jeanne d'Arc, the Pucelle, as 'the Puzel.' The author of the 'First Part of Henry VI.,' whether he was Shakespeare or not, has a pun on the word: ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... of all these puns; the gentlemen will hate me; I must learn to ignore their conundrums until they answer them themselves, and to wait patiently for the pun instead of catching it and laughing before it is half-spoken. Why can't I do as the others do? There was Mr. Van Ingen with his constant stream of them, that I anticipated several times. He said to me, "If I were asked what town in Louisiana I would ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the b—y sans culotte" returned the captain, putting himself in a better humor with his own pun. "But did you see ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was fair; nor yet on account of his device, showing a Moorish squire, who, brush in hand, dusts the gown of a young woman in regal apparel, with the motto, "Per Italia nettar d'ogni bruttura"; this device of the Moor, he tells us, was a rebus or pun upon the word "moro," which also means the mulberry, and was so meant by Lodovico. The mulberry burgeons at the end of winter and blossoms very early. Thus Lodovico symbolized his own prudence and readiness to seize ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... go 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
... legal anecdotes sure of their laugh, and the citations from the manufactories of fun in the Press, which were current and instantly intelligible to all her guests. She smiled suavely on an impromptu pun, because her experience of the humorous appreciation of it by her guests bade her welcome the upstart. Nothing else impromptu was acceptable. Mrs. Warwick therefore was not missed by Lady Wathin. 'I have met her,' she said. 'I confess I am not one of the fanatics about ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... we have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... that I have done so in the account I have given you of my female parent's early adventures. Ho! ho! ho!" and he heaved back, and indulged in a long, low, hoarse laugh, such as a facetious hippopotamus might be supposed to produce on hearing a good pun made by ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... mouth.—Yes, boys," he continued, drawing himself up, "I do mean to hit hard, and let the Principal and the masters see that we are not going to have favouritism here. Indian prince, indeed! Yah! who's he? Why, I could sell him for a ten-pun note, stock and lock and bag and baggage, to Madame Tussaud's. That's about all he's fit for. Dressed up to imitate an English gentleman! Look at him! His clothes don't fit, even if they are made by a ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... peculiarities of the Yankee soldier. In victory or defeat, success or disaster, ease or hardship, some one of a group of soldiers could find something from which to extract a jest or on which to found a pun. ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... all her heart. He never teased her as Jem and Shirley did. He never called her "Spider." His pet name for her was "Rilla-my-Rilla"—a little pun on her real name, Marilla. She had been named after Aunt Marilla of Green Gables, but Aunt Marilla had died before Rilla was old enough to know her very well, and Rilla detested the name as being horribly old-fashioned and prim. Why couldn't they have called her by her first name, Bertha, which ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... exception to this general preference for simplicity among the masters of the first class—that of the celebrated Anthony Allegri, more commonly known under his surname, Correggio. This eminent painter did not think a pun beneath the dignity of his art, and, accordingly, the device by which he distinguishes his pictures consists of a punning symbol, representing his name. We need hardly explain to our readers that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... aware of all the visitors, still less of the subject of conversation when he came in, and he talked his full share till called upon; yet he ran his jokes and his verses upon us all in the easiest manner, saying something characteristic of every body, or avoiding it with a pun; and he introduced so agreeably a piece of village scandal upon which the party had been rallying Campbell, that the poet, though not unjealous of his dignity, was, perhaps, the most pleased of us all. Theodore ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... disposition. He was a great laugher, but never at any recent merriment. It took a long while for him to understand a joke. Indeed, if it were subtle or elaborate, he never understood it. But give the doctor, when in good health, a plain pun or repartee, and let him have a day or two to think over it, and he would come in with uproarious merriment that well-nigh would choke him to death, if the paroxysm happened to take him with his mouth full ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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 ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Pulling a flask from his pocket, he uncorked it. "There's scarce a 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 ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... fortune thereby. He manufactured a mourning snuff-box, of black shagreen, whose lid was ornamented with a portrait of the queen. He called his boxes "La consolation, dans le chagrin,"[Footnote: "Mbmoires de Madame de Campan" vol. i., p. 91.] and his portrait and pun became so popular, that in less than a week he had sold a hundred thousand of these boxes.[Footnote: This word "chagrin," signifies not only grief, but also that preparation of leather, which, in English, is called "shagreen." Hence ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... 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 effeminate looking at home, called an "Angel" ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... sonnets (cxxxv.-vi.)—the most artificial and 'conceited' in the collection—the poet plays somewhat enigmatically on his Christian name of 'Will,' and a similar pun has been doubtfully detected in sonnets cxxxiv. and cxlvii. The groundwork of the pleasantry is the identity in form of the proper name with the common noun 'will.' This word connoted in Elizabethan English a generous variety of conceptions, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... "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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... obvious cases of the comic seem to consist of little more than a shock of surprise: a pun is a sort of jack-in-the-box, popping from nowhere into our plodding thoughts. The liveliness of the interruption, and its futility, often please; dulce est desipere in loco; and yet those who must endure the society of inveterate jokers know how intolerable this sort of scintillation ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... not help smiling at Moran's pun. He was not a bad chap, and had he not been to a great extent under Duncan's influence he might ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... acquire more of that science than might be imbibed along with the learned air of the region in which he had his chambers. In other respects, he was one of the wits of the place, read Ovid and Martial, aimed at quick repartee and pun, (often very far fetched,) danced, fenced, played at tennis, and performed sundry tunes on the fiddle and French horn, to the great annoyance of old Counsellor Barratter, who lived in the chambers immediately below him. Such was Reginald Lowes-toffe, shrewd, alert, and well-acquainted ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 shining" the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... off, and one or two more impressions have followed. A host of imitators soon sprung up, but we are bound to acknowledge that from the above to the present time, Mr. Hood has kept the field—the Pampa of pun—to himself, and right sincerely are we obliged for the many quips and quiddities with which he has enabled us to garnish our pages. We say garnish, for what upon earth can better resemble the garnishings of a table than Mr. Hood's little volumes: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... 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 butler at a reception as "Miss Cobble." "No, Miss Hobble," was her instant correction. She weighed ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... This was especially the case with the buffalo, which were the food and raiment of the people. One of these contrivances was called pis'kun, deep-kettle; or, since the termination of the word seems to indicate the last syllable of the word ah'-pun, blood, it is more likely deep-blood-kettle. This was a large corral, or enclosure, built out from the foot of a perpendicular cliff or bluff, and formed of natural banks, rocks, and logs or brush,—anything ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... hast been to Philadelphia, where all the streets rhyme, and every corner is a pun upon the next. May the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... to be rocked to sleep," facetiously remarked one of the pair by the wall, laughing contentedly at his own pun. He bore all the ear-marks of being regarded as the wit of the locality—every hamlet has one; I have seen ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... only thing I have against Griswold," declared Jack. "He will pun in the most reckless manner at all times. Some of his jokes are not what they are ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... 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
... humour often moves me to tears," said Mr. Amarinth musingly. "There is nothing so absolutely pathetic as a really fine paradox. The pun is the clown among jokes, the well turned paradox is the polished comedian, and the highest comedy verges upon tragedy, just as the keenest edge of tragedy is often tempered by a subtle humour. Our minds are shot with moods as a fabric is shot with colours, and our moods often seem inappropriate. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... this play, the tailor is entrapped into an answer. The imitator, having probably seen the play represented, has carried away the words, but by transposing them, and with the change of one expression—"men" for "things"—has lost the spirit: there is a pun no longer. He might have played upon "brav'd," but there he does not wait for the tailor's answer; and "fac'd," as he has it, can be understood but in one sense, and the tailor's admission becomes meaningless. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... 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 late ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... "What a terrible pun," Jean groaned. "He couldn't stand up very long at first. But I saw he had talent. I gladly learned the skill of holding him upright in a relaxed manner so that he could express himself on paper. ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... intervals, silently, in the savage manner of Leather-stocking, or else, he burst out like a bomb, if the sentence pleased him. It needed to be pretty broad, and was never too broad. He melted with pleasure, especially at a silly pun inspired by his wines, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... meant for a pun?" Beatrice blinked her big eyes at him. "If you're quite through with the train-robbers, perhaps you will tell ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... must be bowled down. 'Tis a sad match at cricket if he can get any notches at Pope's expense. If he once get into 'Lord's ground,' (to continue the pun, because it is foolish,) I think I could beat him in one innings. You did not know, perhaps, that I was once (not metaphorically, but really,) a good cricketer, particularly in batting, and I played in the Harrow match against ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the time of day, and he'll soon be as wide-awake as any on 'em. This morning he brought me a pocket-book, and in it eigh—ty pound flimsies. As he is a young hand, I encouraged him by giving him three pun' ten for the lot—it's runnin' a risk, but I done it. As it is, I shall have to send 'em all over to 'Amburg. Howsomever, he's got to take one pund in home made: bein' out of it myself, I have brought ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... well, and usually has some vivid description of nature, or some gallant passage in swinging verse, which stirs us like martial music; then the poem falls to earth like a stone, and presently appears some wretched pun or jest or scurrility. Our present remedy lies in a book of selections, in which we can enjoy the poetry without being unpleasantly reminded of the author's besetting sins of flippancy ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Mystery 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 ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... What-you-call-it, you see," continued Mr. Redmond. "I desired very much to come down to the boat and obtain a draught of cold water. I didn't expect to obtain a draft on a gold bank then—ha, ha! you see? Not bad—eh? Even a gentleman can't help making a pun sometimes, ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... allowed a pun, To help me through with just this one? I've tried to read Young's Thoughts of Night, But never ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... it," said the poppy, In a tone of sleepy fun, "Flowers raised by crewel culture— Only, please, excuse the pun." "Oh, don't joke on such a subject," Said an innocent, rather low, While from sev'ral other quarters ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... word. Words used in contrast with one another are given opposing effect by contrasting emphasis: "Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more." "My words fly up; my thoughts remain below." When words are used with a double meaning, as in the case of a pun, or with a peculiar implication, or are repeated for some peculiar effect of mere repetition,—when we have, in any form, what is called a play upon words,—a peculiar pointedness is given, wherein the circumflex inflection plays a large part. "Now ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Constitution were double-shotted and did fearful work. The frigates were only half-pistol-shot distance from each other. The excitement on both sides was intense. "Hull her! hull her!" shouted Lieutenant Morris. "Hull her! hull her!" shouted the crew in response, for they instantly comprehended the pun. Very soon the Guerriere was a shivered, shorn, and helpless wreck, rolling like a log in the trough of the sea. Hull sent an officer on board to inquire of Dacres whether he had struck his flag. Looking up and down, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... come to see me sometimes?" the daughter and granddaughter was saying sweetly. "I think you will have to come now, for this was a party, and a party calls for a party-call. Oh, can you make as clever a pun as that?" ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... feathers could bring them on his own back,' 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 this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of measureless years, is no doubt the Amitayus-sutra, Amitayus being another name for Amitabha (Fu-shwo-wou-liang-sheu-king, p. 6). See, also, Catalogue, pp. 99, 102. Dr. Edkins also, in his Notices of Buddhism in China, speaks of a translation of "the Sutra of boundless age," by Fa-t'ian-pun, a native of Magadha, who was assisted in his translation by a native of China familiar with Sanskrit, about 1000 ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... seventeen hundred barks was equipped and manned by the natives of the desert. The Imperial navy of the Romans fled before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the Hellespont; but the spirit of the emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had been subdued before the combat by a dream and a pun. [93] The Saracens rode masters of the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were successively exposed to their rapacious visits. Three hundred years before the Christian aera, the memorable though fruitless siege of Rhodes [94] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... tell me, ye who thoughtless ask Exhausted nature for a threefold task, In wit or pathos if one share remains, A safe investment for an ounce of brains! Hard is the job to launch the desperate pun, A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one. Turned by the current of some stronger wit Back from the object that you mean to hit, Like the strange missile which the Australian throws, Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... speak, of course, merely from personal feeling, and with deference to those better able to form an opinion upon the subject;) but it is impossible to hear the unharmonious crash which proceeds from the orchestra of the opera, without immediately recollecting the celebrated pun of Rosseau: "Pour l'Academie de musique, certainement il fait le plus du bruit du monde." On the other hand, it is amongst the peasantry alone that you now find the ancient music of France. Those airs which are so deeply associated with all the glory and gallantry of the old monarchy; those songs ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... retire to France, he knew no French; and having obtained a Grammar for the purposes of study, our friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress Brummell had 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 Morning."—Detached ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... 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 from Okeham? I ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... which was not to be introduced into the public worship on the great day and the solemn seasons of the Church's joy and thanksgiving? If so, Baxter's appeal to this usage is a gross sophism, a mere pun. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... admired primarily wit; and while it would be too much to 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 ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... 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!" ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... over at his chum, and ready for his pun, even under such circumstances, "my head is feeling a 'trifle heavy,' but I'm game to stand up ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... heard this statement he had howled with laughter. Now, however, knowing that she could not see the fallacy, he did not try to argue the point. The Amphibs were, in their way, as hidebound—no pun intended—as the Land-walkers. ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... Irving expected a pun-ish-ment. But the master told him he was pleased to find that he liked to read such good books. He told him not ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... conspicuous part at the modern dinner-table and luncheon. His power of looking wise and being foolish at the same time fits him for modern society. He enters it as a pepper-caster, a feathered bonbonniere, a pickle- holder (in china), and is drawn, painted, and photographed in every style. A pun is made on his name: "Should owled acquaintance be forgot?" etc. He is a favorite in jewellery, and is often carved in jade. Indeed, the owl is having his day, having had the night always ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Princkocke Proclamation that the gentry should reside at their mansions in the country Proculus Prologue spoken by a woman Protest, affected use of the word (See Dyce's Shakespeare Glossary.) Puckfist Puerelis Puisne Puisnes of the Inne Pumpion Pun[to] reversos ( back-handed strokes in fencing) Push Putt a girdle ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... that humorist - the first that made a pun at all - Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all - How popular at dinners must ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... 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 ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. I shall just be four or five miles ahead. There is no hurry for Hurree—that is an Europe pun, ha! ha!—and you come after. There is plenty of time; they will plot and survey and map, of course. I shall go tomorrow, and you the next day, if you choose. Eh? You go think on it till morning. By Jove, it is near morning now.' He yawned ponderously, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling |
