"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... outside Marguerite Audoux's house after my first visit to her. "Tiens," he said, "tu viens de la mansarde de Genie l'ouvriere." And the clever little pun was true. Marguerite Audoux is a genius, and she does not understand what people mean when they ask her "how" she "writes." She opens her weak eyes very wide at the question, laughs as a child laughs ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... mean to make my fortune out of it. If you like, you can offer the pun on reasonable terms ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... 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, which ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... 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 ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... un," chuckled the old man, not above a pun at death's door. "Reglar revellin in it is ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... his plate, snapped out, "Blanche? Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the whole. While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made to smile, testified that he thought the pun absurd, Forcheville had shewn at once that he could appreciate its subtlety, and that he was a man of the world, by keeping within its proper limits a mirth the spontaneity of which ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... was the use of breaking your head to save him?" said Mrs. Crowl, with an unconscious pun. "He must ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... wanton eye Transfixed his soul and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping Penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... this is an excellent, though unintentional, pun. "Pudor" is Spanish for "shame," but this meaning makes the sentence difficult to read (at best), although it does convey the intent. I think that the word intended is "powder," but left the original in case I ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... proceeded on with a Chief to his Village 2 miles in the Same Plain, where we were treated kindly in their way and continued with them all night Those two Villages consist of about 30 double lodges, but fiew men a number of women & children; They call themselves Cho pun-nish or Pierced Noses; " their dialect appears verry different from the Tushapaws altho origneally the Same people" They are darker than the Tushapaws Their dress Similar, with more beads white & blue principally, brass & Copper in different forms, Shells and ware their haire in ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... 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
... roof on a ladder. De chimley was built out o' mud an' rocks. Den us moved in an' started growin' us somp'in t'eat. Us didn' have no horse an' plow; Yankees done carried off all de horses an' mules an' burnt up ever'dthing lak plows. Us dug up de groun' wide a grubbin' hoe an' raised pun-kins an' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... his prayers. He was heard, after, perhaps, being almost dead, to laugh gently to himself in the still night, when his wife or children, who were the watchers, thought him asleep. Many of the hard lessons of fate he seasoned, as old Latimer did his sermons, with a pun, and he excused himself from sending more "copy" for his magazine by a sketch, the "Editor's Apologies," a rough pen-and-ink drawing of physic-bottles and leeches. Yet Hood had not only his own woes to bear, but felt for others. No one had ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... perhaps, the handsomest man in our corps; but you have not got a single rupee. You ask me for Julia, and you do not possess even an anna!"—(Here the old rogue grinned, as if he had made a capital pun).—"No, no," said he, waxing good-natured; "Gagy, my boy, it is nonsense! Julia, love, retire with your mamma; this silly young gentleman will remain and smoke a ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... note in the Biographia Scoticana. He does not seem to have been aware that, beyond this note, there was any evidence to produce, that such a meeting as has now been described, was ever actually held. But he observes, "There is nothing improbable in the meeting, and Cromwell's pun quite accords with other anecdotes of his conversation."(5) The part which Mr. Binning is reported to have acted on this occasion, was no less characteristical of him. He was a very able disputant. But when giving utterance ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... The pun was new to the Seigneur, and he turned to the Cure chuckling. "Think of that, Cure! He knows the classics." He laughed till the tears came ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was never excited. The lads of Paris had determined to take their chance and not to do one atom more than they were called upon or compelled to do. These wooden barriers are made of le bois de tremble (aspen), and the pun was that the fortifications "tremblaient partout." You will like to hear something of Edgeworth's friend, St. Jean d'Angely;[46] he came up to the barrier where our landlord (who had been formerly an imperial guardsman and fought in the battle of Marengo) was posted; here he called ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... whirlwinds to the levin brand; Conclusive tenderness; fraternal grog, Tidy conjunction; adamantine bog, Impetuous arrant toadstool; Thundering quince, Repentant dog-star, inessential Prince, Expound. Pre-Adamite eventful gun, Crush retribution, currant-jelly, pun, Oh! eligible Darkness, fender, sting, Heav'n-born Insanity, courageous thing. Intending, bending, scouring, piercing all, Death like pomatum, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Rastignac had 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
... Pow't, pulled. Pree'd, pried (proved), tasted. Preen, a pin. Prent, print. Prie, to taste. Prief, proof. Priggin, haggling. Primsie, dim. of prim, precise. Proveses, provosts. Pu', to pull. Puddock-stools, toadstools, mushrooms. Puir, poor. Pun', pund, pound. Pursie, dim. of purse. Pussie, a hare. Pyet, a magpie. Pyke, to pick. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... roam to jostle the pun shameless to drive away it is not her fault gradually or little by little he was talking loudly, with his glass in ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... Mr. Bolter would sell 'er for, if at all. But 'e paid four thousand pun, laid down at the stables where she was kep' after the smash of the Bellethorne family. She's got a pedigree longer than some lord's families, and 'er track record was what brought Mr. Lewis Bolter to Hengland when she was quietly ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... excellencies in this animal, though the 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 ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... unharmonious (I 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 ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... life become more numerous and more complex. Like them, too, it is altogether removed from utility in the struggle for life, and appears sporadically in a very small percentage of the population; the majority being, as is well known, totally unable to say a witty thing or make a pun even to ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... a pun? It is worthy of Plato. Mr. Landor, you have been a friend of Wordsworth. But, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... long ago; It ne'er looked up, since we were dipt in show; When sense in doggrel rhimes and clouds was lost, And dulness flourished at the actor's cost. Nor stopt it here; when tragedy was done, Satire and humour the same fate have run, And comedy is sunk to trick and pun. Now our machining lumber will not sell, And you no longer care for heaven or hell; What stuff will please you next, the Lord can tell. Let them, who the rebellion first began To wit, restore the monarch, if they can; Our author dares not be the first bold man. He, like the prudent ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... enough. Lord Gower said:—"Mr. Attorney, you seem to be very lukewarm for your party." He replied:—"My Lord, I never was lukewarm for my party, nor ever was but of one party!"' Walpole's Letters, ii. 140. Mr. Croker assumes that Johnson here 'attempted a pun, and wrote the name (as pronounced) Go'er. Johnson was very little likely to pun, for 'he had a great contempt for that species of wit.' Post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Thou 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
... the spring of 1809, H—— laughed at my being distressed at Long's death, and amused himself with making epigrams upon his name, which was susceptible of a pun—Long, short, &c. But three years after, he had ample leisure to repent it, when our mutual friend and his, H——'s, particular friend, Charles Matthews, was drowned also, and he himself was as much affected ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... course it isn't becoming, but we Aegises stoop not to vanity. I have gained five pounds since Christmas; so when my spring suit is made, tell the dress-maker to put the extra material into the waist, and not waste it (a pun, but very poor) in puffs and paniers, for we have abolished them. We try to get along with the ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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 ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... hypothesised this deduction from the fact that they were quite utterly gone. A thorough scrutiny of my surroundings, which I conducted with the aid of my late sleeping companion, merely served to confirm this belief, the search being bootless. I have no intention of making a pun here. Puns are to me vulgar, and hence odious. I mean bootless in the proper sense of ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... 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
... smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks, And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve,[8] familiar toad. Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, In pun, or politics, or tales, or lies. Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. His wit all see-saw, between that and this, Now high, now low, now make up, now miss, And he himself one vile antithesis. Amphibious thing! ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the 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 Greene, ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... ordered the steward to bring his wife. He denied in vain that he had one, but brought her at last, and while every one else was talking gayly at the feast she was silent. The king observed it and asked her the cause of her silence; and she answered with a pun on her name: "Vineyard I was and Vineyard I am, I was loved and no longer am: I know not for what reason the Vineyard has lost its season." Her husband, who heard this, replied: "Vineyard thou wast and Vineyard thou art, loved thou wast and no ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... Johnson, Milton, Chaucer, and Burns had it. Aunt 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 little daughter, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... evidently ventured upon a pun; how far it has succeeded I will leave others to say. The lovely creature was, however, entirely ignorant of my calling; and whatever impression such a description would leave on the reader's mind, it made none on mine, though in the second verse I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... 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
... can't, Dad, I feel too nervous," I replied, not laughing at his joke, as I might have done another time, although the pun was a regular old stager, passing the yet unopened letter across the table. "You read it, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Plautus, Terence, Cicero. He brought forward illustrations from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton, Puritan, writers, Congreve, Cowper, and others, until he concluded with Hood, who he declared had first unfolded to the human mind the possibility of the pun. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... predict—" I began, when my villainous pun was arrested in mid-utterance by the voice of Captain Tolliver, suddenly becoming the culminating ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... "What a good pun, or what a bad one?" asked Bouldon with perfect simplicity. "But, I say, Gregson, are there any other fish but your friends, the newts, in this pond, do you think? because if there are not, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Jock, an' efter han' He buckled til his ain wark, For sune a' owre the kintra-side They kent aboot his bane wark, An' hoo a law-wer fleggit Jock At Corkie's instigation, An' gart him pay a five-pun' note By ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... "brahman," "bird," and "tooth" suggests "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, and the ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... A roar of pun-protesting groans filled the cavern, and as several of the boys arose in attitudes of vengeance, the punster made a dive for the exit and disappeared beyond the blanket portiere. None of the protestors followed. They did not feel like engaging ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... This Mark, with variations, was also employed by Philippe and Guillaume le Noir, the work of the three men covering a period of nearly 100 years. The device of Gilles or Gillet Couteau, Paris, 1492, is apparently a double pun, first on his Christian name, the transition from which to oeillet being easy and explaining the presence of a pink in flower, and secondly on his surname by the three open knives, in one of which the end of ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... and a subject so low. For mean's her design, and her subject as mean, The first but a rebus, the last but a dean. A dean's but a parson: and what is a rebus? A thing never known to the Muses or Phoebus. The corruption of verse; for, when all is done, It is but a paraphrase made on a pun. But a genius like hers no subject can stifle, It shows and discovers itself through a trifle. By reading this trifle, I quickly began To find her a great wit, but the dean a small man. Rich ladies will furnish their garrets with stuff, Which others for mantuas would ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... 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 ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... in his hearing, he would have destroyed me. He would, indeed. He would, 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 ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... reign had received both benefit and glory from it. The people of Alcala punningly said, the church of Toledo had never had a bishop of greater edification than Ximenes; and Erasmus, in a letter to his friend Vergara, perpetrates a Greek pun on the classic name of Alcala, intimating the highest opinion of the state of science there. The reclining statue of Ximenes, beautifully carved in alabaster, now ornaments his sepulchre in the College of ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... eris,"—a motto which, together with the two distaffs taken as supporters, proves the modesty of the burgher families in the days when the Orders held their allotted places in the State; and the naivete of our ancient customs by the pun on "eris," which word, combined with the "i" at the beginning and the final "s" in "melius," forms the name (Serisy) of the estate from which the family ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 the Etonians in 1805, gaining more notches (as one of our chosen ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... lightning in his 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 ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Japanese youth, I became an eager listener to their folk lore and fireside stories. When later, during a residence of nearly four years among the people, my eyes were opened to behold the wondrous fertility of invention, the wealth of literary, historic and classic allusion, of pun, myth and riddle, of heroic, wonder, and legendary lore in Japanese art, I at once set myself to find the source of the ideas expressed in bronze and porcelain, on lacquered cabinets, fans, and even crape paper napkins and tidies. Sometimes I discovered the originals of the artist's ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... The pun is in "Khattiyah" which may mean a writer (feminine) and also a spear, from Khatt Hajar, a tract in the province Al-Bahrayn (Persian Gulf), and Oman, where the best Indian bamboos were landed and fashioned into lances. Imr al-Keys (Mu'allakah v. 4.) sings of "our dark spears ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... keep you trifling too long on this asinine subject. I have already passed the Pons Asinorum, and will desist, remembering the old pedantic pun of Jem ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... know what the Bible says, 'Biteth liek a serpent and stingeth like an adder?' Ah, here it is. But gloomy forebodings seize me: it is suspiciously light. Paradoxically, its lightness induces gravity in me. But that pun is entirely too fine-drawn ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... not 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 upon ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... are! Ah, you mean that infernal compound which they cover ships' bottoms with? What an atrocious pun!" The man looked puzzled. "Bullen, R.A., great at composition; it sounds well," continued Lightmark gaily, just touching in the brown sail ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... at the pun. "Very well, sir, but while speaking of aces, it's always best to have 'em up. And the higher up the better. Larkin is a great pilot when he has plenty of altitude—right where a lot of the others fall down. Take him with you and let ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... to you, ask Dr. Cockburn. Radcliffe(19) I know not, and Barnard(20) I never see. Walls will certainly be stingier for seven years, upon pretence of his robbery. So Stella puns again; why, 'tis well enough; but I'll not second it, though I could make a dozen: I never thought of a pun since I left Ireland.—Bishop of Clogher's bill? Why, he paid it to me; do you think I was such a fool to go without it? As for the four shillings, I will give you a bill on Parvisol for it on t'other side of this paper; and pray tear off the two letters I shall write to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... speaks our language. "Your charming Wilkie (says he) pleases me more and more. Why does he not visit us? He will at least find here some good proofs of my respect for his talents." Of course he could not mean to pun. I was then told to admire his impression of Woollett's Battle of La Hogue; and indeed I must allow that it is one of the very best which I have seen. He who possesses that, need not distress himself about ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... his answer long enough to decide against the aimless pun of asking, "What Bushwick?" and merely ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... here an untranslatable pun in the original; niemiec, the Polish word for German, is derived from ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Steve. Jack's no ordinary rip-roaring, hell-raisin' miner. He knows what's what. That's why we call him Crumbs—because he's fine bred. Pun, see. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... Ginger, and they 'eard Ted Reddish and 'is wife coming back. They came in, sat down agin, and after Ted 'ad 'ad another good look at the wild man and prodded 'im all over an' looked at 'is teeth, he spoke up and said they'd decided to give a 'undered pun for 'im at the end o' three days if ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... me," said Ed laughing, "and if I don't give our war whoop you may be sure this is not me—I am still on the Robinson ranch—there, that was an unpremeditated pun; I mean the old Robinson Crusoe and I forgot that he was great-grandfather to ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... 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
... the Husks in the best manner you can. Then pun them with a due proportion of Sugar, and a little Orange-flower, or Rose-water. When it is in a fitting uniform paste, make it into round Cakes, about the bigness of your hand, or a little larger, and about a finger thick; and lay every one upon a ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... I don't understand what you're talking about!" he says. "But I fancy it's a pun of some sort! Very well, then, what did the ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... 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 ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... four gone one all right," said Sahwah, but Nyoda's mind was too busy with wondering about Gladys to notice the pun. ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... kind of misty color," said Boosey, laughingly, and emphasizing missed, as if he meant some pun ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... sorrows of disappointed ambition to the original gayety of his character. His deepest sorrow was to look upon himself for a grave and thoughtful statesman, and be condemned by fate to a chronic state of fun and to hard labor at pun-making for life. Imagine Junius damned to lead Touchstone's life! He became sourness itself. His puns were lugubrious. His fun grew heavy, and his gayety was funereal. The pretensions of this checked gravity which settled upon his factitious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... silence which withheld from the world Teresa's full name. Cascales y Muoz has since thrown more light upon this episode. But these gentlemen have done nothing more than to tell an open secret. Escosura, long ago, all but betrayed it in the following pun: "Tendamos el velo de olvido sobre esa lamentable flaqueza de un gran corazn," he says, referring to the affair with Teresa, "y recordemos, de paso, que el sol mismo, ese astro de luz soberano, tan sublimemente cantado ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... "evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is—without meaning any pun. I can read ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... sight too much—too much by half. I'll let 'e have the lot for a fi'-pun' note. An' I'd like it to be a new wan, if 'tis the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... internal and external economy of his realm; he restored the caste-divisions, and carried fire and sword into the lands of his enemies. He transported many captives to Egypt; fortified his eastern frontier; and built, in the Gulf of Suez, a fleet of large and small ships, in order to traffic with Pun and the "Holy Land,"[EN46] and to open communication with the "Incense-country" and with the wealthy shores of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... aversion to a pun[976]. He once, however, endured one of mine. When we were talking of a numerous company in which he had distinguished himself highly, I said, 'Sir, you were a COD surrounded by smelts. Is not this ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... religion made him turn his wit, whenever he could, in the direction of a defence of happier and humaner views. In the long great roll that includes Homer and Shakespeare, he was the last great man who really employed the pun. His puns were not all good (nor were Shakespeare's), but the best of them were a strong and fresh form of art. The pun is said to be a thing of two meanings; but with Hood there were three meanings, for there was also the abstract truth that would have been there with no ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... was the fashion at one time even to pun in the coats of arms of the nobility, and in the choice of their mottos, he went to work again at the Heralds'-office, and tried a course of puns, but to no purpose: the commissioner was mortified to find all his ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... interest and soul as a barn without the roof. He alternated like a pendulum between Simon Square and the Greek and Latin class-rooms. He even took the noted Professor Lauchland seriously, whereupon the latter promptly made a Greek pun upon his name, by which he was called in the class whenever the students could remember it. There was great work done in that class-room—in the manufacture of paper darts. Ebenezer took no part in such frivolities, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the work, knew the danger, and kept a sharp look-out on their own account. Soon several shots told that the slaughter had begun, but each hunter was quickly separated from the other, and none knew aught of the success of the rest until the pun was over. ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... few New England boys who do not become familiar with the rod or gun in childhood. We take it, that, in the mother country, the monopoly of land interferes with this, and that game laws, by a sort of spontaneous pun, tend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... yet are you forgot, my jocund boy! Davus, the harbinger of childish joy; Forever foremost in the ranks of fun, The laughing herald of the harmless pun; Yet with a breast of such materials made— Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid; Candid and liberal, with a heart of steel In danger's path, though not untaught to feel. Still I remember, in the factious strife, The rustic's musket aim'd against my life: High poised ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the extreme of materialism, the influence of his philosophy—whose different phases there is no occasion to trace out in detail—had already passed its culmination. From his later writings little more has found its way into public notice than the pun, that man is ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... cause of his arrival the need of a royal letter to authorize the continuance of legal process in the Duchy of Cornwall, and to check the waste of royal woods and parks within it. Unmannerly James is said by Aubrey to have received him with a poor rude pun on his name: 'Rawly! Rawly! true enough, for I think of thee very rawly, mon.' Isaac D'Israeli credits the story. He superfluously thinks it settles, as without better authority than the King's broad Scotch it certainly could not, the proper pronunciation of the name. In itself it may be rather ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... laugh, but his trachea did. The chuckle rose no higher than the rings of the wind-pipe, and then it was vigorously thrust back again by the impulse of gravity into the region of his heart, and gladdened it with hidden mirth in its dark centre. The Dominie loved a pun; whether it was let off in English, Greek, or Latin. The last two were made by nobody but himself, and not being understood, were, of course, relished by himself alone. But his love of a pun was a serious attachment: ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 the quarrelsome wife is throwing ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... of two years in America. Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania. Archbishop Ryan's Latin pun. The Mohonk Conference and President Hayes. Excursion with Andrew Carnegie to Mexico, California, and Oregon. Meetings with Cornell students. Cathedral of Mexico. Our reception by President Porfirio Diaz and his ministers. Beauty of California in spring. Its two universities. My relations ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... your own fantastic expression, you should "cosset on your heaving brisket" for its splendid success as a survivor of its primogenitors. Look at the pinnacle of political success to which the McKinley bill has brought Bill McKinley (excuse the paltry little pun) and sound money (saving your presence) brought Grover Cleveland, and then contemplate the ignominy and obscurity has brought George and free silver has brought Bryan. Evidently George isn't a mouse to McKinley, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a pun?" Beatrice blinked her big eyes at him. "If you're quite through with the train-robbers, perhaps you ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... only that banter, pun, and quibble are the properties of light men and shallow capacities; that genuine humour and true wit require a sound and capacious mind, which is always a grave one. Contemptuousness is not incompatible with them: worthless is that man who feels no contempt for the worthless, and weak who treats ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of others. A mixture of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in self, he is by no means a commonplace buffoon, but stands firm in his sufficiency of original stock. His elaborate nonsense, his grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if he did, is both ludicrous and natural. His jokes to be sure are mostly failures; nevertheless they are laughable, because he dreams not but they succeed. The poverty of his wit is thus enriched by his complacency ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... i-beh ma kun whi ni weh, da win gu ba hin ah. Ah hlun hla hlue i hi ei-ah whi no ei-ah whi no i-ah ei-ah hi-ah hin ni ni ah. Tur wey u tur p'hoa whe na he de a na lhen h'li he pun hi ni ni ah Li u yu sa na a a a ya he wa a hi ni ni a hi ni ni a ni ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... 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
... snuff-box, from which he continually helped himself, on his left. Clare having been formally introduced, Charles Lamb took a whole handful of snuff, and falling back in his armchair, stuttered out an atrocious pun concerning rural poets and hackney coaches. Seeing that his guest looked somewhat displeased, he took him under closer treatment at his right hand, and with the help of the big decanter, soon put him into excessive good humour. The conversation ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... 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
... stoop to a pun? From bad to worse! I'm enough of a psychologist to feel the evil spreading, and I've the scent ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... is its slowness in taking a jest. Should you happen to venture on one, It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed: And it always looks grave at a pun. ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... marmalade graced 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 ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... is the pink of propriety, no doubt about that!" said the rascal, laughing heartily at his heartless pun. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... resistance which might come from the rest 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
... cold or in penitence for the pun, he walked over to the windows to pull down the shades. But before he did so he looked out into the night, his breath making a frosty vapor on the pane. Below him the Square gleamed in white patches under the arc-lamps, and across these white patches here and ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... shouldering the odium of unpopular acts. [Sidenote: May, 1521] When the Duke of Buckingham was executed for the crime of standing next in succession to the throne, Wolsey was blamed; many people thought, as it was put in a pun attributed to Charles V, that "it was a pity so noble a buck should have been slain by such a hound." Wolsey lost the support of the nobles by the pride that delighted to humble them, and of the commons by the avarice that accumulated a corrupt fortune. But, though the rich hated him for his ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... before the Warren stables, as we shall neither see lights nor hear noises, if it isn't the blowing of our own noses. That's what I say, and I've said it many a time; but there's nobody 'ull ventur a ten-pun' note on their ghos'es as they ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... 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!" ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... modern authors. It is a term of contempt and derision, applied to symbolic bearings that are assumed without the authority of the Heralds' College. In many cases they allude to the name or occupation of the bearer: the motto is probably a pun upon the figures contained in the shield, or some technical expression used by the parties in their agricultural or ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... similitude, semblance; affinity, approximation, parallelism; agreement &c 23; analogy, analogicalness^; correspondence, homoiousia^, parity. connaturalness^, connaturality^; brotherhood, family likeness. alliteration, rhyme, pun. repetition &c 104; sameness &c (identity) 13; uniformity &c 16; isogamy^. analogue; the like; match, pendant, fellow companion, pair, mate, twin, double, counterpart, brother, sister; one's second self, alter ego, chip of the old block, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... epitaph, which should avoid studied effects and meretricious devices. But writers in the early stages of a literature and common people of all periods find a pleasure in them. Alliteration, onomatopoeia, the pun, and the play on words are to be found in all the early Latin poets, and they are especially frequent with literary men like Plautus and Terence, Pacuvius and Accius, who wrote for the stage, and therefore ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... 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 have been a ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... 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 a mistress, who ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... quite 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, and with never a civil word lumbered off ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... to be a dacent sort of fellow," said one of the bailiffs. "Now, look here. If ye get us 'ut of thus, we'll gev ye a pun' note, and as much dhrink ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... I don't want none to tell me that, squoire. Tho', squoire, it's better to me nor a ten pun' note to hear you say so. I allays had a leaning to you, squoire; but I'll more nor lean to you, now. I've said all through she was good, and if e'er a man in Bungay said she warn't—; well, I ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... bun. Can cen cin con cun. Dan den din don. dun. Fan fen fin fon fun. Guan guen guin guon gun. Han hen hin hon hun. Jan jen jin jon jun. Lan len lin lon lun. Man me min mon mun. Nan nen nin non. nun. Pan pen pin pon pun. Qua quen quin quon qun. Ran ren rin ron run. San sen sin son su. Tan ten tin ton tun. Uan uen. uin uon. uun. Xan xen xin xon xun. Yan yen yin yon yun. ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... know, nor yet anybody else! Why—he don't know, hisself! I says to him, I says, just you clear out them lodgers, I says, and give me the run of the premises, I says, and it shan't cost you a fi'-pun note more in the end, I says. Then if he don't go and tie me down to a price for to make good front wall and all dy-lapidations. And onlest he says wot he means by good, who's to know?... Mortar, John!" John supplied mortar with a slamp—a sound like the fall of a pasty ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the portraits of very large Royal Freemasons, now unsubstantial ghosts. There at the end of the room was Hood. Some publishers, I think, were our companions. I quite remember his pale face; he was thin and deaf, and very silent; he scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and he made one pun. Some gentleman missed his snuff-box, and Hood said,—(the Freemasons' Tavern was kept, you must remember, by Mr. CUFF in those days, not by its present proprietors). Well, the box being lost, and asked for, and CUFF (remember ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... begin my own history by saying, I went to a North Country school, where I was noted for my aptness in learning; and my skill at 'prisoner's base,'—upon my word I purposed no pun! I was intended for the Church. Wishing, betimes, to instruct myself in its ceremonies, I persuaded my schoolmaster's maidservant to assist me towards promoting a christening. My father did not like this premature love for the sacred rites. He ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Hear hims!" proud, too, of his vote, And lost virginity of oratory, Proud of his learning (just enough to quote), He revelled in his Ciceronian glory: With memory excellent to get by rote, With wit to hatch a pun or tell a story, Graced with some merit, and with more effrontery,[mq] "His country's pride," he came down ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... In accordance with Statutes of 1883, Chapter 268, any officer, agent, or servant of any corporation or association, who confers, or authorizes [15] to be conferred, any diploma or degree, shall be pun- ished by a fine not less than five hundred dollars and not ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... stand; for in 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
... my execrable pun. Steele leaned against the counter, his gray glance studying the man ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... fit you," he said, and looked round the court with a smile. But no one spoke. "It's a pun," he added in a fierce tone, then all the ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... like beer and other vices, is the peculiar prerogative of men, I suppose. But you need not be afraid. I read PUNCHINELLO sometimes, and it is a terrible warning to people who are tempted to pun. I could give you frightful instances of the appalling depth to which the men who make ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... Pensionary Barnevelt, in his seventy-second year, was at length brought to the block. Diodati, a divine of Geneva, made a miserable pun the occasion; he said that "the Canons of the Synod of Dort had taken off the head of the advocate of Holland." This pun, says Brandt in his curious "History of the Reformation," is very injurious to the Synod, since it intimates that the Church loves blood. It ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... keep you there for an hour longer for that vile pun," said Cumberland. "Is your letter ready, Oaklands, for ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... shoes J. Cuthbert was now wearing! It would take more than the friendship of a Benjamin Wade, powerful though that was, to salvage Old Nat. That nanny-whiskered old galoot was sunk in too many fathoms of water ever to wade ashore. (He smiled at his poor pun.) The missing power-of-attorney that had scuttled the Lawson supporters would continue missing for all time to come. Mr. J. Cuthbert Nickleby, the then genial secretary, had seen to that once for all; in ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... This pun had been repeated, and had reached Louis XIV, so that the chevalier presently heard, directly enough this time, that the king desired him to travel for some years. He knew the danger of neglecting—such intimations, and since he thought the country after all preferable to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 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 |
