"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unmeaning, 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 old monarchy; those songs ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... theme. He ornaments it in diction, or tasks his fancy, or explores the secrets of science, or illustrates the events and scenes of his country: he excites broad-mouthed laughter, by salutary jest and pun; he expatiates in pathetic sentences, or murmurs in the mellow cadence of song; or arouses interest by the embellishments wherewith history is refined, and which shed a light over the dim annals of the past, making ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... individual who is much concerned about the body. This little joke is purely a professional one. It must go no farther. I am afraid the public thinks uncharitably of undertakers, and would consider it a proof that Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the man who would make a pun would pick a pocket. Well; we all try to do the best we can for ourselves—everybody else as well as undertakers. Burials may be expensive, but so is legal redress. So is spiritual provision; I mean ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... saw him pull out something—a limp thing, made of black cloth, not unlike the thing which a dentist places over your mouth when laughing-gas is to be administered. 'Laughing-gas, no laughing matter'—the irrelevant and idiotic embryo of a pun dangled itself for an instant in my brain. What other horrible thing would come out of the bag? Perhaps some gleaming instrument?... He closed the bag with a snap, laid it beside him. He took off his top-hat, laid that beside ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... alone. Don't you ever feel as if you should like to have been a pillar-saint in the days when faith was as strong as lye (spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dish-water? (Jerry is looking over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to send, and a disgrace to the University—but never mind.) I often feel as if I should like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,—yes, and have it soaped from top to bottom. Wouldn't it be fun to look down at the bores and the duns? Let us get up a pillar-roosters' association. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... really and in themselves, because they are mere conceits; the analogies in them are fortuitous, depending not on the nature of the things themselves, but on the private fancy of the writer, having no more real and logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun; in plain English, untrue, only allowable to Juliets or Othellos; while their self-possession, almost their reason, is in temporary abeyance under the influence of joy or sorrow. Every one must feel the exquisite fitness of Juliet's "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... does—it must amuse you. It's all down here in black and white. Listen. The reason a pun amuses you is as follows: 'It impels the mind to identify objects quite disconnected. This obstructs the flow of thought; but this is too transient to give rise to pain, and the relief which comes with insight into the true state of the case may be a source ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... continued my father,—I declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and horn-works.—That I dare say you would not, quoth Dr. Slop, interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately at his pun. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... a former Mayor of this city. He ventures to allude in this solemn document to the management of the New York and New Haven Railroad Company, as 'the good bishop and his directors;' makes a first rate pun on the names of two citizens; and says to the Aldermen, 'And now we have, like the Arabs, only to 'fold our tents and silently steal away,' congratulating ourselves that this is the only stealing which has been performed by this honorable body.' Mr. Barnum's administration in Bridgeport has ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... that, in 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 by a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... 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
... billiard-table. But the most favourite game is the national one of Mora, which they pursue with surprising ardour, and at which they will stake everything they possess. It is a destructive kind of gambling, requiring no accessories but the ten fingers, which are always—I intend no pun- -at hand. Two men play together. One calls a number—say the extreme one, ten. He marks what portion of it he pleases by throwing out three, or four, or five fingers; and his adversary has, in the same instant, at hazard, and without seeing his hand, to throw out as ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... distant thoughts of marriage; the finger-circling ring, the purity-figuring glove, the envy-pining bride-maids, the wishing parson, and the simpering clerk. Farewell, the ambiguous blush-raising joke, the titter-provoking pun, the morning-stirring drum.—No son of mine shall exist, to bear my ill-fated name. No nurse come chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No midwife, leering at me from under the lids of professional gravity. I dreamed ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 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 ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... pun on the choeur, or choir, of the church that was too good for its worshippers. For there was a great contrast between the populations on each side of the dividing line. St. Godard was filled with magistrates and mighty men of ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... 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
... took it. She takes a lot of things, when I've showed her how. For instance, photographs. She has several snapshots of Jim Beckett and me together. I have some of him and her. They're pretty strong cards (I don't mean a pun!) if we decide to use them. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... He "will make a Star Chamber matter of it" that Sir John Falstaff has "defied my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge." He bears on his "old coat" (of arms) a "dozen white luces" (small fishes), and there is a lot of chatter about "quartering" this coat, which is without point unless a pun is intended. {8} Now "three luces Hauriant argent" were the arms of the Charlecote Lucys, it is certain. There is some reason then, for connecting Shallow with Sir Thomas Lucy, and an apparent basis for the deer-stealing tradition, although the incident in the play may, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... you!" said Timon; but Apemantus stayed a while longer and told him he had a passion for extremes, which was true. Apemantus even made a pun, but there was no good laughter to be got out ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... tea, cucumbers and 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
... best references. 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 at end. P. P. S. La la la ree. I feel ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... lines have occurred in vol. i. 238, where I have noted the punning "Sabr" patience or aloes. I quote Torrens: the Templar, however, utterly abolishes the pun in the last ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... cider (the table beverage)—with a low "Merci, monsieur," accompanied by a pleasant smile and an inclination of the head. The acquaintance began with a look. It was after a more than usually exasperating pun from the man in the knickerbockers, and involuntarily their eyes met, after which they exchanged glances each time he came out with a particularly blatant piece of idiocy. They could not long remain in doubt that their opinion on the prevailing conversation was identical, and the unanimity ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... dry night in the pasture 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
... Mike turning to the lieutenant. "We have struck the right man. But he don't mean that I am any wickeder than the rest of the world. I used to be called here by my last name, and Job invented the pun he has ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... way, I heard repeated many years later at a dinner in China. To appreciate this witticism, one may refer to the New York directory of 1789, which describes John Slidell, the father of the Slidell of whom we are speaking, as "soap boiler and chandler, 104 Broadway." Miss Fairlie's pun seems to me to be quite equal to that of Rufus Choate, who, when a certain Baptist minister described himself as "a candle of the Lord," remarked, "Then you are a dipped, but I hope not a wick-ed candle." It is said that upon another occasion, after the return of Mr. Slidell from a foreign trip, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... sally; flash of wit, flash of merriment; scintillation; mot[Fr], mot pour rire [French]; witticism, smart saying, bon-mot,jeu d'esprit[Fr],epigram; jest book; dry joke, quodlibet, cream of the jest. word-play, jeu de mots[Fr]; play of words, play upon words; pun, punning; double entente, double entendre &c. (ambiguity) 520[Fr]; quibble, verbal quibble; conundrum &c. (riddle) 533; anagram, acrostic, double acrostic, trifling, idle conceit, turlupinade|. old joke, tired joke, flat joke, Joe Miller|!. V. joke, jest, crack a joke, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... 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, I vote we ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... 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
... extracts "The Great Light; spirit of light," from Michabo, "beyond a doubt!" In my poor opinion, whatever claims Michabo may have as an unique creator of earth and heaven—"God is Light,"—he owes his mythical aspect as a Hare to something other than an unconscious pun. In any case, according to Dr. Brinton, Michabo, regarded as a creator, is equivalent to Strachey's Ahone. This amount of corroboration, valeat quantum, I may claim, from the Potomac Indians, for the belief in Ahone on the James River. Dr. Brinton is notoriously not ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... enough for you fellows to pretend that you know what's going to happen when the quarter-back shouts a lot of numbers to you," observed Amy, hugging his knees and exposing a startling view of crushed-raspberry socks, "but I'm too old a bird—no pun intended this time—to be caught. Besides, I played once for a couple of weeks, and I know that signals didn't mean ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... week to office-boys. That's five 'pun' in your money, I believe. But, meanwhile, now that I'm in London, I have some business with Mr. Peebleby." Mitchell produced an American silver dollar and forced it into the boy's hand, whereupon the latter blinked in a dazed manner, then hazarded the opinion ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... laughed to himself as he slipped the little microphone out of his left ear. Now he was half deaf as well as half lame—he was literally giving himself to this cause. He would have to remember the pun to tell Alec Diger later, if there was a later. Alec had a profound ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... laughed the old gentleman. "Didn't mean it for a pun, I hope? Never could endure puns! So you came down yesterday, young gentleman, did you? And where may you ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Paris frock to land in, and meet "Larry": also hat. She looked a dream, and felt one. Every woman did her best in the clothes line (I don't mean a pun), but Mrs. Shuster transcended us all. You can't think what she was like in one of the new-fashioned dresses, and a close-winged hat with a long stick-out thing behind exactly the shape and size of a setting hen. You may imagine a description of Mrs. Shuster ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... call it a bad pun if I say P. P. see," pointing to Paul, who was coming from the cabin attended by Captain Truck. The latter was conversing warmly, gesticulating towards the corvette, and squeezing ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the mountebank, and whose humor, coarse but pungent, seemed a drunken echo of the laughter of Moliere. The clown exerted his low talent, throwing out at each moment some low jest, some immodest pun, to which his master, simulating a prudish indignation, responded by thumps on the head. But the adroit clown excelled in the art of receiving affronts. He knew to perfection how to bend his body like a bow under the impulse of a kick, and having received on one cheek ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... a scheming, calculating Yankee, I should have been rich now; but all my life I have been too generous and confiding. I have always let principle stand between me and my interests." Mr. Leckler took himself all too seriously to be conscious of his pun, and went on: "Now this is a matter in which my duty and my principles seem to conflict. It stands thus: Josh has been doing a piece of plastering for Mr. Eckley over in Lexington, and from what he says, I think that city rascal has misrepresented ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... 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 ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... word of unknown origin, signifies some question or statement in which some hidden and fanciful resemblance is involved, the answer often depending upon a pun; an enigma is a dark saying; a paradox is a true statement that at first appears absurd or contradictory; a problem is something thrown out for solution; puzzle (from oppose) referred originally ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... 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
... new under the sun When Europe was a jungle half Asia flocked to the canonical conferences of Buddhism; and for centuries the people have gathered at Pun, Hurdwar, Trimbak, and Benares in immense numbers. A great meeting, what you call a mass meeting, is really one of the oldest and most popular of Indian institutions In the case of the Congress meetings, the only notable fact is that the priests ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... "a particular part," says the Westminster Review, "is appropriated to the heads of the houses, and is called Golgotha therefrom, a name which the appearance of its occupants renders peculiarly fitting, independent of the pun."—Am. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... hundred thousand francs (the half of his savings) with which to buy a house in Paris, and I have charged Louis to find one in your neighborhood. My mother has given me thirty thousand francs for the furnishing, and I shall do my best not to disgrace the dear sister of my election—no pun intended. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... rather of imaginative or playful expression, where the verbal medium is a medium indeed, having a certain transparency, a certain reference to independent facts, but at the same time elaborates the fact in expressing it, and endows it with affinities alien to its proper nature. A pun is a grotesque example of such diremption, where ambiguities belonging only to speech are used to suggest impossible substitutions in ideas. Less frankly, language habitually wrests its subject-matter ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... more, for I envied the dog. The nurse carried me back to bed and gave me morphia. That day I looked no more. For me the Divine Comedy was far from ended. The divine humorist has even descended to a pun. Talk of Mahomet's coffin. I lie between the two Champs-Elysees, the one where warm life palpitates, and that other, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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. ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... said the cook, following Sam's lead, and working up a shudder. "Not for fifty pun in gold. I don't want to ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... ministers; but both broke down under the opposition of the nobility. Then Calonne volunteered, witty and reckless, and convoked the notables, or not-ables, as Lafayette called them in one of his American letters, borrowing a bad pun from Thomas Paine. Calonne could do nothing with the notables, who obstinately refused to submit to taxation. Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, took his place. This was in April, 1787, a month before Paine's arrival ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... qualities of the people of Japan. Though they followed us about in droves, they never attempted any familiarities; in fact our first overtures were treated with awe-like silence. The only words we understood, in common with them, were "tabac" and "Ya-pun" (Japan); indeed Japan is the beginning and end of their ideas—their one standard of perfection. Everything they noticed about us—watches, biscuit, the buttons on our clothing, our boots even—were all qualified with the word "Ya-pun," ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... met some knowing blades, who put him up to 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... 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
... pasquinades were published, by affixing them to a pedestal at the corner of the Palazzo Braschi. And one of Pasquino's bitterest jests was directed against Olimpia Maldachini. Her name was cut in two, to make a good Latin pun: 'Olim pia, nunc impia,' 'once pious, now impious,' or 'Olimpia, now impious,' as one chose to join or separate the syllables. Whole books have been filled with the short and pithy imaginary conversations between Marforio, the statue of a river god which used to stand ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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
... your words; it was the truth they conveyed, pun-gently as it was expressed. But you shall not drive me off upon that, and so escape the expression of my deep gratitude, my—' he was on the verge now; he would not speak in the haste of his hot passion; he would weigh each ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 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 ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... mere thin pocket size, soon grew into notice and favour; the edition ran 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: how they enliven and embellish the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... made Julian laugh immoderately, both from his aunt's notion of the universal autocracy of her will, and from her obvious bewilderment at the technical word "Trials," which had betrayed her unconsciously into a pun, which, of all things, she abhorred. However, he wrote back politely—explained what he meant by "Trials"—begged to be excused for a neglect of her wishes, which was inevitable—and reiterated his promise of joining his brothers, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... senses than one, to their tailors, and 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... for Mr. Raikes had felt himself left behind by the subject; and the stuff that was in this young man being naturally ebullient, he lay by to trip it, and take a lead. His remarks brought on him a shrewd cut from the Countess, which made matters worse; for a pun may also breed puns, as doth an anecdote. The Countess's stroke was so neat and perfect that it was something for the gentlemen to think over; and to punish her for giving way to her cleverness and to petty vexation, 'Hem!' sounded once more, and then: 'May I ask you if the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hear laughter and applause from the duchess. This was no comedy to 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 him out! Stop ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... even accepting your analogical pun, what does it amount to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... take this bull by the horns, pretending or thinking that genuine feeling can be worthily carried in a pun. So that in his impassioned 'hymn to God the Father', deploring his own sinfulness, his ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... important intelligence of my betrothal, in which I was then too much the neophyte to express any very opinionated judgment as to the pros or cons of my approaching benediction as a Benedick (if I may be allowed a somewhat humorous pun). ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... their seats to the fire. "They calkilated they'd gobble up the hull of Canada; but 'stead of that, they lost the hull State of Michigan an' their great General Hull into the bargain," and he chuckled over his play upon words, after the manner of a man who has uttered a successful pun. ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... the same sentence is an inexhaustible source of amusing varieties. There are many ways of bringing about this interference, I mean of bracketing in the same expression two independent meanings that apparently tally. The least reputable of these ways is the pun. In the pun, the same sentence appears to offer two independent meanings, but it is only an appearance; in reality there are two different sentences made up of different words, but claiming to be one and the same because both have ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... often drunk it together at this very table. I remember one day she said to me, holding out her glass, which she had already emptied several times, 'Fill up again, it is good for one's bones.' A poor pun, eh? Worthy, at the most, of the mistress of a farce writer. Ah! ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... "punning, 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
... 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 his ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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 ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... 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 that passes for such; a girl I love, a ward, a charming child, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... what you're talking about!" he says. "But I fancy it's a pun of some sort! Very well, then, what did ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... 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, ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... 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[949].' He admitted that Mr. Burke's classical pun upon Mr. Wilkes's being carried on the shoulders ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... you 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 of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... talkin' about, I hoped it wuz religion, but felt dubersome, and hurried there fast as I could. I crossed the automobile track where crowded cars wuz runnin' all the while round and round, past the rows of big high headed mettlesome hosses (this is a pun; they wuz ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... Mrs. Thrale, in a letter to Dr. Johnson, writes thus: 'Are you acquainted with Dr. Leigh, {6} the Master of Balliol College, and are you not delighted with his gaiety of manners and youthful vivacity, now that he is eighty-six years of age? I never heard a more perfect or excellent pun than his, when some one told him how, in a late dispute among the Privy Councillors, the Lord Chancellor struck the table with such violence that he split it. "No, no, no," replied the Master; "I can hardly persuade myself ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... words don't 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 ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... a single word: Mr. Mix started, and gripped the receiver more tightly. "Nothing!... Why, I don't quite get you on that.... It's an open and shut proposition—No, I most certainly am not trying to make a pun; I'm calling you up in my official capacity. That's the most flagrant, barefaced attempt to evade a law—Why, an idiot could see it! It's to drive the crowd into the Orpheum ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... Pluvius, who seemed to take especial pleasure in demonstrating their failure, nineteen centuries after the contemptuous erasure of him from the calendar, to escape his power. It was reserved for the Philadelphia Commission to bring his reign (not the slightest intention of a pun) to a close. The most delicate silk or gem, and the most delicate wearer of the same, were enabled to pass under roof from San Francisco into the Main Building in Fairmount Park, and with a trifling break of twenty steps at the wharf might do so from the dock at Bremen, Havre or Liverpool. The hospitable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... 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 ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... know that Grandma's makin' Loads of mince and pun'kin pies? Don't you smell those goodies cookin'? Can't you see 'em? Where's your eyes? Tell that rooster there that's crowin', Cute folks now are keepin' mum; They don't show how fat they 're growin' ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bursts out laughing, and prepares to pour out again,—but you, the stranger, do make the best of your way out, with no preparation at all; whereupon you infallibly put your foot (and half your leg) into a river, really that, of rainwater—that's a Bora (and that comment of yours, a justifiable pun!) Such things you get in Italy, but better, better, the best of all things you do not (I do not) get those. And I shall see you on Wednesday, please remember, and bring you the rest of the poem—that you should like it, gratifies me more than I will try to say, but then, do ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... obliged to keep up a sickly intercourse, not intending a pun. They were too often called in to consult together, to maintain an open war. While the heads of their respective families occasionally met, therefore, at the bed-side of their patients, the families themselves had no direct communications. It is true, that Mrs. Woolston and Mrs. Yardley were ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... all," she continued. "I weigh twelve pounds more than I did last summer. Mr. Shoop weighed me on the store scales. I wanted to weigh him. He made an awful pun, but ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... of dead roses, a glance at a pun, A toss of old powder, a glint of the sun, They meet in the ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary, two or three times, and associate with them the idea of oblivion ('tis Hartley's method with obstinate memories), or say, Independent, Independent, have I not already got an independence? That was a clever way of the old Puritans, pun-divinity. My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would be to bury such parts in heathen countries, among nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar-people! Some say they are Cannibals; and then, conceive a ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... task at length was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the spiteful squib and pun ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... 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
... head of a negress and sometimes supported by canting figures in full. This Mark, with variations, was also employed by Philippe and Guillaume le Noir, the work of the three men covering a period of nearly 100 years. The device of Gilles or Gillet Couteau, Paris, 1492, is apparently a double pun, first on his Christian name, the transition from which to oeillet being easy and explaining the presence of a pink in flower, and secondly on his surname by the three open knives, in one of which the end of the blade is broken. It was almost inevitable that both Denis Roce or Ross, aParis bookseller, ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... were differences. The L10 was not an ordinary "ten-pun' note" but was a "token" representing something like four and a half millions received by the Fleet for services rendered to Foreign Powers and others; and Mr. WHITLEY, who was in the Chair, too so far from being asleep, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... evening, your wife will reproach you for being sullen and not speaking to her; perhaps she will say that you are ridiculous, when you have just made a pun; but this is one of the slight annoyances incident to our system; and, moreover, what does it matter to you that the education of women in France is the most pleasant of absurdities, and that your marital obscurantism ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... motors of one hundred and eighty horse-power each, and with a whole series of vertical and horizontal rudders. She was popularly called the Mayfly—a name which, both in and out of Parliament, suggested to bright wits an ill-omened pun. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... 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
... a robbery than Christians, they being all Gentiles—Pagans—Heathen dogs. What do I infer from this? Why, that upon any solution of the case, hardly one worthy saying can be mentioned, hardly one jest, pun, or sarcasm, which has not been the occasion and subject of many falsehoods—as having been au-(and men)-daciously transferred from generation to generation, sworn to in every age as this man's property, or that man's, by people that must have known they were lying, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... capable of any possible and common application, it is sure to live, either as a proverb or a "saw," as the case may be. Alliteration and rhyme are amongst the most frequent of these "jingles;" and occasionally a "pun" supplies their place very effectively. We find these conditions fulfilled in the proverbs and saws of every people in the eastern and western world, alike in the remotest antiquity and in our own time. But are they therefore "without meaning?" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... (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
... names, indeed, which in the social circle will in spite of all due gravity awaken a harmless smile, and Shenstone solemnly thanked God that his name was not liable to a pun. There are some names which excite horror, such as Mr. Stabback; others contempt, as Mr. Twopenny; and others of vulgar or absurd signification, subject too often to the insolence of domestic witlings, which occasions irritation even in the minds of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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, of most of which it has long ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... about making puns. A mere step above comes the epigram, the isolated epigram framed and glazed. Then such impressionist art as Crichton's pictures, mere puns in paint. What they mean is nothing, they arrest a quiet decent-minded man like myself with the same spasmodic disgust as a pun in literature—the subject is a transparent excuse; they are mere indecent and unedifying exhibitions of himself. He thinks it is something superlative to do everything in a startling way. He cannot even sign his name without being offensive. He lacks altogether the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... to walk like a woman in the State of Louisiana,"—as near as the pun can be translated. The company laughed. Jean Thompson looked at his wife, whose applause he prized, and she answered by an asseverative toss of the head, leaning back and contriving, with some effort, to get her arms folded. Her laugh ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Juvenal and Horace— this man would look at him with a grin and a sly wink. And sometimes Thyrsis would make a casual remark in conversation, and the man would twist it out of its meaning, or make a pun out of it—to find some excuse for his satyr's leer. So at last Thyrsis was moved to say to him—"Don't you ever realize what a state you've ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... garage and stables. The Scotch pup had ravished the rag-doll from the nursery, dragged it to a corner of the lawn, dug a hole, and buried it after the manner of careless undertakers. There you have the mystery solved, and no checks to write for the hypodermical wizard or fi'-pun notes to toss to the sergeant. Then let's get down to the heart of the thing, tiresome readers—the Christmas heart ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Grunthi-jee,' said the Subadar-Major, 'you and I grow too old to care for the Kahar-ki-nautch—the Bearer's dance.' He named one of the sauciest of the old-time nautches, and smiled at his own pun. Then he turned to his nephew. 'When I was a lad and came back to my village on leave, I waited the convenient hour, and, the elders giving permission, I spoke of what I ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... to ascribe the saying to Caesar, rather than to Cicero, in order to render to some extent this fearful pun. ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... pun. Steele leaned against the counter, his gray glance studying the man I had so ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... get out of the scrape without a broken head or a bloody nose. Johnny was a bully, and he had a bully's reputation to maintain; but he never fought when the odds were against him; and he had a congressman's skill in backing out before the water got too hot. On the whole, he rather enjoyed the pun; and he had the condescension to laugh heartily, though somewhat unnaturally, ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... that for a pun, don't you?" growled the son of the squire. "If you do, let me tell you ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... synthetics played an important part in the war. According to an ancient military pun the endurance of soldiers depends upon the strength of their soles. The new compound rubber soles were found useful in our army and the Germans attribute their success in making a little leather go a long way during the late war to the use of a new synthetic tanning material known as "neradol." ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... history. In A Woman is a Weathercock, III, iii, printed in 1612, but written earlier, one of the actors exclaims of an insufferable pun: "O Newington Conceit!" The fact that this sneer is the only reference to the Newington Playhouse found in contemporary literature is a commentary on the low esteem in which the building was held by ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... astonishing number and ingenuity of the devices, perhaps exceeded most of the like nature throughout the realm. Amongst other whimsical fancies was a ton crossed with a bar, having the cyphers A and B above and below, which worthless and absurd pun, a sort of emblematic wit much cultivated by our forefathers, indicated the name of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... by making a pun about its all being Greek to me, but I shan't." He returned to Page ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... employment and then in working for the organization, Ronny Bronston had never been in the Octagon Building. He'd seen photographs, Tri-Di broadcasts and he'd heard several thousand jokes on various levels from pun to obscenity about getting around in the building, but he'd never been there. For that matter, he'd never been in Greater Washington before, other than a long ago tourist trip. Population Statistics, his department, had its main offices in ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... note, which 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 ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... arise, To Juniper's Magpie or Town-Hall[1] repairs: Where, mindful of the nymph whose 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 ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... party of children on a merry-making. Sylvia decorated herself with garlands till she looked like a mermaid; Mark, as skipper, issued his orders with the true Marblehead twang; Moor kept up a fire of pun-provoking raillery; Warwick sung like a jovial giant; while the Kelpie danced over the water as if inspired with the universal gayety, and the very ripples seemed to laugh ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... "Dollars were made to spend. I am young, and every man must sow his wild oats and then settle down. I want to be a 'hail fellow well met' with every one." So he is ever ready to drink a social glass, to give a pun and to be a "masher on the girls." With this determination uppermost in his life purpose he starts out to be a good-timer. Perhaps some mother expects to hear great things of her boy, some father's hopes ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the occasion; it is affectionate, it is pathetic, yet it remembers his vanities, and, with a faint gleam of recollected mirth, even his plumpness and corpulency; but it is a pleasantry softned and rendered even vapid by tenderness, and it goes off in the sickly effort of a miserable pun.(47)—But to our immediate purpose,—why is not his Cowardice remembered too? what, no surprize that Falstaff should lye by the side of the noble Percy in the bed of honour! No reflection that flight, though unfettered by disease, could not avail; that ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... power,' according to somebody, and, like most power, is sadly abused. Take, for illustration, the following specimen of the 'narrative pun:' ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... of the 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
... young male Forey allied the System and the cake in a miserable pun. Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the table silent, as if he were going to speak; but he said nothing, and the young gentleman vanished from the conversation in a blush, extinguished ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... classical part of the audience resented the touches of Spanish local colour in the play, the mixture of pleasantries and familiar speeches with the tragic dialogue, and of heroism and savagery in the character of Hernani, and they made all manner of fun of the species of pun—de ta suite, j'en suis—which terminated the first act. "Certain lines were captured and recaptured, like disputed redoubts, by each army with equal obstinacy. On one day the romantics would carry a passage, which the enemy ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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 negative quantity ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... said Bumpus, with a broad grin—"Hallo! why, here's a spear that must ha' bin dropt by one o' them savages. That's a piece o' good luck anyhow, as the man said when he fund the fi' pun' note. Now, then, keep an eye on them gals, lad, and I'll be back as soon as ever I can; though I does feel rather stiffish. My old timbers ain't used to ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... de big house. Marster didn't have many Niggers, but us had plenty somepin' t'eat. He had a big gyarden whar he raised mos' evvything: corn, 'taters, cabbages, peas, onions, collard greens, and lots of pun'kins. When de mens plowed up de 'taters us chillun had to go 'long and put 'em in baskets. De bestes' times was hog killin' times. Us chillun wukked den. Dey hung up de hogs all night and nex' day us cut 'em, put 'em down in salt, and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... treatise Institutio Oratorio, in twelve books. It is not merely when these authors speak of definite points of language and pronunciation that they are valuable; sometimes a casual remark, an anecdote, or a pun, may be of very great importance, as will be seen from time to time ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... head. "I haven't an ocean," Beth proceeded. "You don't see it? Well, I didn't at first. You see an ocean and a notion sound the same if you say them sharp. Now, do you see? They call that a pun." ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the secession of so large a proportion of the company, from the service of the jolly god, although, upon the present occasion, he could well have dispensed with his orgies. Neither the song, nor the pun, nor the jest, had any power to kindle his heavy spirit, mortified as he was by the event of his party being so different from the brilliant consummation which he had anticipated. The guests, stanch boon ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... made a fortune by the sale of mourning snuff-boxes, whereon the portrait of the young Queen, in a black frame of shagreen, gave rise to the pun: "Consolation in chagrin." All the fashions, and every article of dress, received names expressing the spirit of the moment. Symbols of abundance were everywhere represented, and the head-dresses of the ladies were surrounded by ears of wheat. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... cherry-stone of a quibble;[130] that he is sometimes tempted away from the natural by the quaint; that he sometimes forces a partial, even a verbal, analogy between the abstract thought and the sensual image into an absolute identity, giving us a kind of serious pun. In a pun our pleasure arises from a gap in the logical nexus too wide for the reason, but which the ear can bridge in an instant. "Is that your own hare, or a wig?" The fancy is yet more tickled where logic is treated with ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... pines, have been timbers in every ship that has floated," returned the vice-admiral, half-unconscious himself, of the pun he was making. ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... shot," said Dick; "we'll toe him along at the end of a lariat if he does, that's all." He grinned feebly as he got off this atrocious pun, but Bert and Tom refused to ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... heroic look had meant, and her respect for it was great. Its intention had not been to suggest inclusion of George and Kathryn in her pun, it had only with pure justice put it to her to ask herself what her own personal decision in such a matter ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Bumpus, with a broad grin—"Hallo! why, here's a spear, that must ha' been dropped by one o' them savages. That's a piece o' good luck, anyhow, as the man said when he f'und the fi' pun' note. Now, then, keep an eye on them gals, lad, and I'll be back as soon as ever I can; though I does feel rather stiffish. My old timbers ain't used to such ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... as that which he saw before him for a day longer than it was obliged to by law. By disregarding law, he wished to know whether the laws would not be greater than the profits. He admitted that this was a pun; but appealed to PUNCHINELLO upon the point of the propriety of puns. Reform, he would say, was a "plant" of slow growth. He had sown it; and his colleague, Mr. ——-, had watered it; but it did not seem ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... was some scenery to represent a forest. Besides, there is a pun intended. The words answering for 'forests' and 'door' in Greek ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... into the pagan simplicity that the man was made for the work, when the work was so much less immortally momentous than the man. At about this stage of a history of England there is generally told the anecdote of a pun of Gregory the Great; and this is perhaps the true point of it. By the Roman theory the barbarian bondmen were meant to be useful. The saint's mysticism was moved at finding them ornamental; and "Non Angli sed Angeli" meant more ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... B.C. The verses are graduated so as to form a pair of wings. "The first altar," written by Dosiadas of Rhodes, is the earliest instance of a Greek acrostic, or of any one which formed words. An acrostic is a play upon spelling, as a pun is upon sound; and in both cases the complication is too slight for real humour. They are rather to be considered as ingenious works of fancy. The first specimens are those in the Psalms—twelve of which have twenty-two verses beginning with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... be his latest thought; and some more poetic impieties, asking only in return that when the storm of battle had swept over, I should 'shed a tear' on seeing 'the oak lie, where it fell.' Of course, about this lugubrious pun, there could be no misconception. The Captain was unmistakably indicated; and I was so moved that I could no longer retain my secret; but walking with Milly that day, confided the little romance to that unsophisticated listener, under the chestnut trees. The lines were so amorously dejected, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... 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 ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... only have been here in person to-day, it would have been perfect. I think that he must have been, in spirit, for I 'felt' his presence quite near me several times; I confided as much to Dr. Bentley and he made an atrocious pun on the word 'presents.' I wish he wouldn't; it is the only thing about him that I don't like, but he will make them. Wasn't Donald thoughtful and dear to have bought a Christmas gift for me during those overcrowded days before he went away?—a whole set ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... CLINCH. A pun or quibble. To clinch, or to clinch the nail; to confirm an improbable story by another: as, A man swore he drove a tenpenny nail through the moon; a bystander said it was true, for he was on the other ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... see the force of my argument. Now, look here!" and he lugs out a crisp, fluttering, snowy HUNDRED-PUN NOTE! "If my son and Miss Griffin are married to-morrow, you shall have this; and I will, moreover, take you into my service, and give ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Protestants of the East," had been spreading the story of the life and love of Christ. And here, in this year of grace 635, in the city of Chang-an, and in all the region about the Yellow River, the good priest Thomas the Nestorian, whom the Chinese called O-lo-pun—the nearest approach they could give to his strange Syriac name—had his Christian mission-house, and was zealously bringing to the knowledge of a great and enlightened people the still greater and ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... tongue could rest, ere the lips could close The sound of a listener's laughter rose. It was not the scream of a merry boy When harlequin waves his wand of joy; Nor the shout from a serious curate, won By a bending bishop's annual pun; Nor the roar of a Yorkshire clown;—oh, no! It was a gentle laugh, and low; Half uttered, perhaps, perhaps, and stifled half, A good old-gentlemanly laugh; Such as my uncle Peter's are, When he tells you his tales of Dr. Parr. The rider looked to the left ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... you see the pun, mademoiselle?" asked Poiret. "This gentleman calls himself a man of mark because he is ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... make fools of themselves. When Dickens described Mr. Chuckster, Dickens was, strictly speaking, making a fool of himself; for he was making a fool out of himself. And every kind of real lark, from acting a charade to making a pun, does consist in restraining one's nine hundred and ninety-nine serious selves and letting the fool loose. The dullness of the millionaire joke is much deeper. It is not silly at all; it is solely stupid. It does not consist of ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... ran through my mental sieve, its precepts filtering unheeded, could I but glean a suggestion of a pun or a bon mot. The solemnest anthems of the choir were but an accompaniment to my thoughts as I conceived new changes to ring upon the ancient comicalities concerning the jealousies of ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... word "aches" pronounced as a dissyllable, although the line imperatively demands it; and Shakspeare shows that the word was not unusually so pronounced, as he introduces it with the same quantity in the prose dialogue of "Much Ado about Nothing," and makes it the vehicle of a pun which certainly argues that it was familiar to the public ear as ache and not ake. When Hero asks Beatrice, who complains that she is sick, what she is sick for,—a hawk, a hound, or a husband,—Beatrice replies, that she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... their council-fire. Marjorie Earnshaw, one of the Sixth, had brought her guitar, and struck the strings every now and then as an earnest of the music she intended to bring from it later on. Everybody was in a jolly mood, and inclined to laugh at any pun, however feeble. Mrs. Arnold, always bright and animated, surpassed herself, and waxed so amusing that the circle grew almost hysterical. The Wood-gatherers, whose office it was to mix the cocoa, supplied cup after cup, and refilled the kettle so often that they ventured to air ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... to say the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Lord Campbell asserts that he once, and only once, uttered a pun. A learned gentleman, who had lectured on the law and was too much addicted to oratory came to argue a special demurrer before him. "My client's opponent," said the figurative advocate, "worked like a mole under ground, clam et secrete." His figures only elicited a ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... 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 ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton |
