"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hast been to Philadelphia, where all the streets rhyme, and every corner is a pun upon the next. May the fiend ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... 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 ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... is a 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 ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... returned Lummox. He paused and colored deeply. "I beg," he stammered, "I hope—you don't think me guilty of a pun! When I said 'trying' I referred entirely to the effect on your sensitiveness of these ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... II.i.42 (42,6) pun thee into shivers] Pun is in the midland counties the vulgar and colloquial word for ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... addresses a Congregation, whose interested attention the painter has portrayed with great skill, knowledge of character, and consequent variety and truth of expression. Behind the Preacher stands Death, and, with a kind of grotesque practical pun, holds the jaw of a skeleton over his head, as far more eloquent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... and while it would be too much to say that his heart is not in his theme—that he stands detached from it—still, his sympathies are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking, antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised work appeals, primarily, to the taste and ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... e.g. in his speeches against Vatinius and Piso, was not offensive to Roman taste (de Orat. ii. 216-290). He was much criticized for his jokes, and even Quintilian (ii. 17-21) regrets that he made so many in his speeches. He could never resist the temptation to make a pun. It must be remembered, however, that he was the great wit of the period. Caesar used to have a collection of Cicero's bon-mots brought to him. Cicero complains that all the jokes of the day were attributed to himself, including those made by very sorry jesters (Fam. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... don't 'old, Mat,' he says. 'And far be it from me to undermine a man's faith what he learned acrost his mother's knee,' he says. 'But see here,' he says; 'if that 'ole rockin'-hoss o' yours gets round the course I'll give you fi' pun for yourself; if a miracle happens and he gets a place I'll make it a tenner; and if all the other hosses takes and lays down and dies so as he wins outright, it's a pony to you.' And I says to him: 'As to my champion, ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... jeering look, taunt, or an O fie! tush! Then straight all your thoughts in black and white put, Not minding the if's, the be's, and the but, 30 Then read it all over, see how it will run, How answers the wit, the retort, and the pun, Your writings may then with old Socrates vie, May on the same shelf with Demosthenes lie, May as Junius be sharp, or as Plato be sage. 35 The pattern or satire to all of the age; But stop—a mad author I mean not to turn, Nor with thirst of applause does my heated brain burn, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... unintentional pun the French painter laughed so much that every one turned and looked at him. He had once painted a famous man in Oxford, and knew what a ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... small puppy was running 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 the dinner into ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... likeness, similitude, semblance; affinity, approximation, parallelism; agreement &c 23; analogy, analogicalness^; correspondence, homoiousia^, parity. connaturalness^, connaturality^; brotherhood, family likeness. alliteration, rhyme, pun. repetition &c 104; sameness &c (identity) 13; uniformity &c 16; isogamy^. analogue; the like; match, pendant, fellow companion, pair, mate, twin, double, counterpart, brother, sister; one's second self, alter ego, chip of the old block, par nobile fratrum [Lat.], Arcades ambo^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pun was the lowest order of wit. Newspapers formerly indulged in it freely. One editor would say: "We don't care a straw what Shakespeare said—a rose by any other name would not smell as wheat." Then another paper would answer: "Such puns are barley tolerable, they amaize ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... pun started another vein. "You must hear some of Miss Cobbe's puns," said Miss Hosmer, and they were so daringly, glaring bad, as to be very good. When lame from a sprain, she was announced by a pompous butler at a reception ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... The word 'ears' might probably be better printed ''ears' for 'years;' for a pun—hitherto, however, unnoticed—seems to be indicated by the following words. A very farfetched explanation has been offered by Steevens, and accepted by Delius and, we believe, by all the modern editors, namely, that Antipholus ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... was christened Margaret. Being a floral family, they call me Daisy. A dreadful American man once told me that my aunt was a Bluebell and that I was a Harebell—with two l's and an e—because my hair is so thick. I warn you, so that you may avoid making such a bad pun." ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Shallow. Roger was a rare fellow, 'of the driest humour and the nicest tact, of infinite sleights and evasions, of a picked phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry.' He had the mind of a harlequin; his wit was acrobatic, and threw somersaults. He took in a character at a glance, and threw a pun at you as dexterously as a fly-fisher casts his fly over a trout's nose. 'How finely,' says Hazlitt, in his best and heartiest mood; 'how finely, how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the "Southampton!" Poor and faint are my sketches compared to his! It was like looking ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and, for that matter, a certain kind of triolet can be written by the ream. But to put the eight lines together in such a way that the refrain comes in freshly each time, is often a day's work. In a much lighter vein it is permissible to pun in the repeated lines so that the last repetition comes in ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... casting his eyes upon a noble surloin at the lower end of the table, he cried out, 'Bring hither that surloin, sirrah, for 'tis worthy a more honourable post, being, as I may say, not sur-loin, but sir-loin, the noblest joint of all;' which ridiculous and desperate pun raised the wisdom and reputation of England's Solomon to the highest."—Traditions, vol. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... their heads, and songs in their hearts. Kid was a witty man, usually overflowing with innocent mirth; even in sight of the gallows his humor was insuppressible. Looking into King's face he made a pun on their own names, saying, "I have often heard and read of a kid sacrificed, but I seldom or never heard of a ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Tish seldom makes a pun, which she herself has said is the lowest form of humor. The dig at my figure was unkind, also, and unworthy of her. I turned ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Ecuadorianos laugh at it. It is our law. We make it for ourselves. I am Manuel de Jesus Patino. Remember that name. It will be written some day in history. There are revolutions in Ecuador. We call them elections. It is a good joke is it not?—what you call a pun? ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... "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, while ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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 ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... marriages, also a "night-cap" drunk before bed and lastly an effeminate; one who perambulavit omnium cubilia (Catullus). See Encolpius' pun upon the Embasicete ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... afeared to break it to Emily Wornum, an' the pore chile'd done been buried too long to talk about before her ma heern tell of it, an' then she drapped like a clap er thunder had hit 'er. Airter so long a time, Mingo thar he taken it 'pun hisse'f to tell 'er, an' she flopped right down in 'er tracks, an' Mingo he holp 'er into the house, an', bless your life, when he come to he'p 'er out'n it, she was a changed 'oman. 'Twa'n't long 'fore she taken a notion to come to my house, an' one mornin' when ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... attempt at a pun, Mrs. Braefield disdained to laugh; but turning away from its perpetrator she took off her hat and gloves and passed her hands lightly over her forehead, as if to smooth back some vagrant tress in locks already sufficiently sheen and trim. She was not quite so pretty in female attire as ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... jokes about that most succulent edible, the crab, when the poet Crabbe is mentioned in their presence—and who can resist an obvious pun—are not really far astray. There can be little doubt but that a remote ancestor of George Crabbe took his name from the "shellfish," as we all persist, in spite of the naturalist, in calling it; and the poet did ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... 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 ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... loyal and helpful a colleague. Ah! Praise the gods! here is Polton, like a sacrificial priest accompanied by a sweet savour of roasted flesh. Rump steak I ween," he added, sniffing, "food meet for the mighty Shamash (that pun was fortuitous, I need not say) or a ravenous medical jurist. Can you explain to me, Polton, how it is that your rump steak is better than any other steak? Is it that you have command of a special brand ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... ["Das Ewig-Weibliche zicht uns hinan" ("The Eternal-Womanly draws us upwards").— Goethe's "Faust"] by rehearsing the chorus and orchestra would have afforded me great pleasure—and would probably have succeeded. ["Gelangen" and "gelingen"—untranslatable little pun.] But unfortunately obstacles which cannot be put aside have intervened, and it will be utterly impossible for me to be present at the Goethe Festival, as I have to betake myself in a few days' time to an almost unknown but ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... wearing his hat over his ear and displaying a flower in his button-hole. He was the Vicomte's ideal. The young aristocrat was delighted at having him there; and stimulated by his presence, he even attempted a pun; for he said, as they passed ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... It was a family joke to call the chipmunk's burrow by that name, and though the puppies did not understand the pun they ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... "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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... pun, but since you speak of La Surete,[4] I cannot help noticing that they are blundering terribly over these very affairs. Confound those clumsy fools and their meddling! They will interfere with things which are no concern of ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... of the particular idiom. In general, there 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 ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... first preparing for United Planets employment and then in working for the organization, Ronny Bronston had never been in the Octagon Building. He'd seen photographs, Tri-Di broadcasts and he'd heard several thousand jokes on various levels from pun to obscenity about getting around in the building, but he'd never been there. For that matter, he'd never been in Greater Washington before, other than a long ago tourist trip. Population Statistics, his department, had its main ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... saying, 'Go back to Dora!' and I went; and Dora leaned out of the carriage to talk to me, and we talked all the rest of the way; and I rode my gallant grey so close to the wheel that I grazed his near fore leg against it, and 'took the bark off', as his owner told me, 'to the tune of three pun' sivin'—which I paid, and thought extremely cheap for so much joy. What time Miss Mills sat looking at the moon, murmuring verses—and recalling, I suppose, the ancient days when she and earth had anything ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... e'er in tug or tow was trac'd. The fourth's a Highland Donald hastie, A d—n'd red wud Kilburnie blastie! Forbye a cowt o' cowt's the wale, As ever ran afore a tail. If he be spar'd to be a beast, He'll draw me fifteen pun' at least.— Wheel carriages I ha'e but few, Three carts, an' twa are feckly new; Ae auld wheelbarrow, mair for token, Ae leg an' baith the trams are broken; I made a poker o' the spin'le, An' my auld mither ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... meant for a pun?" Beatrice blinked her big eyes at him. "If you're quite through with the train-robbers, perhaps you will tell ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... consistency, invariably perambulate in one of each. We scarcely know whether it be so or not—we merely relate what we have heard; but we incline to the two Bluchers, because of the eight-and-six. The only additional expense likely to add any emolument to the tanner's interest (we mean no pun) is the immense extent of sixpenny straps generally worn. These are described by a friend of ours as belonging to the great class of coaxers; and their exertions in bringing (as a nautical man would say) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... we say a fifty-pun' note," was the facetious reply. "I could do with a fifty-pun' ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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
... a pun in the French on the two meanings of the verb hausser,—"to raise" and to ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... smile and joke When with misfortune crowned; Who'll pun beneath a pauper's yoke, And as he breaks his daily toke, ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... horses, while 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 she was ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... tired of talking of our faults. Let me turn to the more pleasing task of discussing those of the English. In the first place, and as a minor matter of form, I think that English humour suffers from the tolerance afforded to the pun. For some reason English people find puns funny. We don't. Here and there, no doubt, a pun may be made that for some exceptional reason becomes a matter of genuine wit. But the great mass of the English puns that disfigure the Press every week are mere pointless verbalisms that to the ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... on "Huerta's Finish" are distinctly below the usual standard of this talented writer's work. The metre is satisfactory, but the humor is somewhat strained, and the pun in the last line based on a mispronunciation of the old Indian's name. "Wehr-ta" is probably the correct sound, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... said Phil, laughing. "That was almost a pun. But I'm afraid I'm a bit selfish in my joy about Acton. Since he's a certainty, I can devote all my mighty mind to rackets. I don't think there is a better pair in the place than Vercoe ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... the first to break the long conspiracy of 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 por nuestro vate, manchas tiene ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... at talent whenever you find it in others! " cried the young prince with a pun, which would have delighted Padmavati. "Surely you are jealous of her!" he resumed, anything but pleased with the dead silence that had received his joke; "jealous of her cleverness, and of her ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... execrable pun. Steele leaned against the counter, his gray glance studying the man I had ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... of breaking your head to save him?" said Mrs. Crowl, with an unconscious pun. "He must ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents acquainted with ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... which are double, and perfectly corresponding to each other. The projections at the throat-end of a gaff which embrace the mast are termed jaws. Also, the sides of a gun-carriage. (See BRACKETS.) Also, the sides of a block. Also, an old soubriquet for a marine, derived from a rough pun on his uniform ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... was, 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
... STANLEY LUPINO bore the brunt, was here and there a little thin, and it is time that somebody let the Management of Drury Lane into the open secret that the pun, as an instrument of mirth, has long been a portion of the dreadful past. Mr. WILL EVANS, as the Baroness Beauxchamps, seldom let himself go, being no doubt held in restraint by a consciousness of his resemblance to Miss ELLEN ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... 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
... observed, is only entrusted to the very basest plebeians; but, moreover, seemed to infer that our coat-armour had not been achieved by honourable actions in war, but bestowed by way of paranomasia, or pun, upon our family appellation,—a sort of bearing which the French call armoires parlantes, the Latins arma cantantia, and your English authorities canting heraldry, [Footnote: See Note 37] being indeed a species of emblazoning more befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... probably of saying something to shock Macready; whose personality could hardly have been sympathetic to him, uttered the remarkable wish that the last breath he drew in might be through a pipe and exhaled in a pun. ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... Irving expected a pun-ish-ment. But the master told him he was pleased to find that he liked to read such good books. He told him not to ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... would persuade you 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 ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... M. Langles admires and 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 any of the impressions of the Death ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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
... 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 word. He would; ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... they said of him, making a pun on his name. "He is one of the Spanish Eminences who rule the Pope," a great English periodical ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... morning," she continued. "His name— if I have got it right—is William. Anyhow, that is the nearest I can get to it. His other name, if any, I must leave you to extract from him yourself. It may be Berkshire that he talks, but it sounds more like barking. Please excuse the pun; but I have just been talking to him for half an hour, trying to make him understand that I want him to go home, and maybe, as a result, I am feeling a little hysterical. Anything more rural I cannot imagine. But he is anxious to learn, and a fairly wide field is in front ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... Trust your lives)—Ver. 15. He seems to pun upon the word "capita," as meaning not only "the life," but "the head," in contradistinction to "the feet," mentioned in the next line. As in l. 2 we find that he came to a place where he was not known, we must suppose ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... un," chuckled the old man, not above a pun at death's door. "Reglar revellin in it ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... the fort of San Sebastian on one side and that of San Felipe on the other; while the fort of Pun tales, on the long spit of sand connecting the city with the mainland, defended the channel leading up to Puerto Real, and covered by its guns the Spanish galleys and ships of war anchored there. Lying off the town when the English ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... testified to a keen recollection of his Viennese experiences and the double dealing (no pun intended) of the Austrian shopkeeper just at the present epoch in the national finance system of ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... humor, and it is always very simple and obvious and effective. With him even a very simple pun may be used, not only with-out taking away from the strength of what he is saying, but with a vivid increase of impressiveness. And when he says something funny it is in such a delightful and confidential way, with such a genial, ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... 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' ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... explained, taking it for granted Bob knew nothing of the games, "this is ruelay. You play your money on one number and then rue it." The hill billy chuckled at his pun. "There are 36 numbers on the table," he pointed a long forefinger, "and there are 36 numbers on the wheel. You put your money or chip—the chips are five cents apiece—on one number, and if the ball stops at that number on the wheel, you win 35 ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... by no means was a fool Some Latin, too, he'd learned at school), Said (thinking he might change disgrace For laughter, and thus save his place), "Oh! call me not a stupid cur, 'Twas but a lapsus linguae, sir." "A lapsus linguae?" one guest cries, "A pun!" another straight replies. The joke was caught—the laugh went round; Nor could a serious face be found. The master, when the uproar ceased, Finding his guests were all well pleased, Forgave the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... examine and unfold the intricacies of sciences at home, are led by novelty; which not only supplies ornament to beauty or to grandeur, but adds agreeable surprise to the point of the epigram, and to the double meaning of the pun, and is courted ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... 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
... of Janson, being at a repast with a celebrated Boileau, had undertaken to pun him upon her name:—"What name, told him, carry you thither? Boileau: I would wish better to call me Drink wine." The poet was answered him in the same tune:—"And you, sir, what name have you choice? Janson: I should ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... North Pole Dinner) it is not merely that men make fools of themselves. When Dickens described Mr. Chuckster, Dickens was, strictly speaking, making a fool of himself; for he was making a fool out of himself. And every kind of real lark, from acting a charade to making a pun, does consist in restraining one's nine hundred and ninety-nine serious selves and letting the fool loose. The dullness of the millionaire joke is much deeper. It is not silly at all; it is solely stupid. It does not consist of ingenuity ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... gate-keeper, as our heroine left the yard, and then laughed as though he had committed a pun that would immortalize ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... the Swineherd at all, but is a play upon the name of Bishop Bloet,—the horn being intended to suggest "Blow it!" It seems hardly possible to credit the mediaeval wit with no keener sense of humour than to perpetrate such a far-fetched pun. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... 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, ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... 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 firmly ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the people—a spirit which, fortunately for Europe, 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) ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... rare and occasional glimpses the dreary obscurity of the African. The eclogues have more animation; but they can only be called poems by courtesy. They have nothing in common with his writings in his native language, except the eternal pun about Laura and Daphne. None of these works would have placed him on a level with Vida or Buchanan. Yet, when we compare him with those who preceded him, when we consider that he went on the forlorn hope of literature, that he was the first who perceived, and the first who attempted to revive, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will be one in the mouth.—Yes, boys," he continued, drawing himself up, "I do mean to hit hard, and let the Principal and the masters see that we are not going to have favouritism here. Indian prince, indeed! Yah! who's he? Why, I could sell him for a ten-pun note, stock and lock and bag and baggage, to Madame Tussaud's. That's about all he's fit for. Dressed up to imitate an English gentleman! Look at him! His clothes don't fit, even if they are made by a ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... of writing that Mr Burn was burning with ardour. I see it written—it is something worse than a pun—therefore, per omnes modos et casus—heretical and damnable—consequently I beg the reader to consign it to the oblivion with which we cover our bad actions, and read thus:—The gunner was burning with impatience to show the captain what a valuable officer he commanded. The two guns had long ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... phraseology; vocabulary. Associated Words: glossary, glossarist, glossography, glossology, glossologist, lexicology, lexicologist, etymology, etymologist, etymologize, neology, lexicography, terminology, paronomasia, pun, punning, onomatopoeoea, syncope, syncopation, literal, literally, literalism, transliteration, verbal, verbalist, verbalism, battology, logomachy, logomachist, verbarium, apocope, kyriology, metonomy, autonomasia, multiloquence, perissology, purism, purist, elision, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... love degenerates into lewdness; and his jests are insupportably low and illiberal, and fit only for "the dregs of Romulus" to use and to hear; he has furnished examples of every species of true and false wit, even down to a quibble and a pun. Plautus lived in an age when the Romans were but just emerging into politeness; and I cannot forbear thinking, that if he had been reserved for the age of Augustus, he would have produced more perfect plays than even the elegant ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... was different, the degree was different, the manner was different. The boundless range of scientific knowledge, the brilliancy and exquisite nicety of illustration, the deep and ready reasoning, the strangeness and immensity of bookish lore—were not all; the dramatic story, the joke, the pun, the festivity, must be added—and with these the clerical-looking dress, the thick waving silver hair, the youthful-coloured cheek, the indefinable mouth and lips, the quick yet steady and penetrating greenish ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... 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
... time in that affair," said Quincy, conscious, when too late, that he had wasted a pun on an obtuse ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... tried and trusty friends. Another prominent lawyer was Matt. Carpenter, of Wisconsin, one side of whom as described by Charles Sumner when he called him a "jester," while Mr. Edmunds, by a ready pun, as aptly described the other side of him by declaring that the Senator from Massachusetts probably meant a "sug-gester." Retaining the dragoon swagger, which he had acquired at West Point, a jovial nature, indifferent to the decorum of public life, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... me forcibly, and on reflection I found that I never knew nor heard of one, though I have once or twice heard a woman make a single detached pun, as I have known a hen ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... it who can, Though he 'merrily' liv'd, he is now a 'grave' man; Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun! Who relish'd a joke, and rejoic'd in a pun; 150 Whose temper was generous, open, sincere; A stranger to flatt'ry, a stranger to fear; Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will; Whose daily 'bons mots' half a column might fill; A Scotchman, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... jus' lak at de big house. Marster didn't have many Niggers, but us had plenty somepin' t'eat. He had a big gyarden whar he raised mos' evvything: corn, 'taters, cabbages, peas, onions, collard greens, and lots of pun'kins. When de mens plowed up de 'taters us chillun had to go 'long and put 'em in baskets. De bestes' times was hog killin' times. Us chillun wukked den. Dey hung up de hogs all night and nex' day us cut 'em, put ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... 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 side ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... translated means 'Diana's Grove.' Then the next one higher than it, but just beyond it, is called 'Mercy'—in all probability a corruption or familiarisation of the word Mercia, with a Roman pun included. We learn from early manuscripts that the place was called Vilula Misericordiae. It was originally a nunnery, founded by Queen Bertha, but done away with by King Penda, the reactionary to Paganism after St. Augustine. ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... with 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, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Shakespeare seldom if ever brings in a person merely for the sake 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 in dealing ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... translator might better convey the intention of the pun, contained in the ducere serram of the text, by the locution, une prise ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... indictment—"Goard A'mighty don't know, nor yet anybody else! Why—he don't know, hisself! I says to him, I says, just you clear out them lodgers, I says, and give me the run of the premises, I says, and it shan't cost you a fi'-pun note more in the end, I says. Then if he don't go and tie me down to a price for to make good front wall and all dy-lapidations. And onlest he says wot he means by good, who's to know?... Mortar, John!" John supplied mortar ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... for hever and hever, hamen," after he was gone. O'Riley remarked, in reference to his departure, that every man in the ship was about to lose a son! Yes, indeed he did; he perpetrated that atrocious pun, and wasn't a bit ashamed of it. O'Riley had perpetrated many a worse pun than that before; it's to be hoped for the credit of his country he has perpetrated a ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... trust you, Tom, and my ve'y good friend, youh fatheh, to watch out for Ardea's little fo'tune," was the way he put it. "I haven't so ve'y much longeh to stay in Paradise," he went on, with a silent little chuckle for the grim pun, "and what I've got goes to her, as a matteh of cou'se." Then he added a word that set Tom to thinking hard. "I had planned to give her a little suhprise on her wedding-day: suppose you have the lawyehs make out that block of new stock to Mistress Vincent ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... 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 ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... of a Stuart, and the nonchalance "under difficulties" of "Milord What-then" in Voltaire's Princess of Babylon, where the noble traveller is discovered philosophically reading the news-paper in his carriage after it was overturned. English beauty, ever since the days of Pope Gregory, with his pun about Angles and Angels, has been greatly admired in the south of Europe—not a little, perhaps, on account of the general fairness of its complexion. I once heard a fair-faced English gentleman, who would have been thought rather effeminate looking at home, called an "Angel" ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... 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
... moechte gerne etwas geniessen ohne 'Kosten' zu haben." A a pun upon the word "kosten," which has two meanings—"taste" and "cost." In "Die Traumdeutung," third edition, p. 71 footnote, Professor Freud remarks that "the finest example of dream interpretation left us by the ancients is based upon a pun" (from "The Interpretation of Dreams," by Artemidorus ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... join his young companions, and flew to his solitary task, while the classical boys avenged themselves by a schoolboy's villanous pun: stigmatising the studious application of Bossuet by the bos suetus aratro which frequent flogging had made them ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... description, for it was here that the pasquinades were published, by affixing them to a pedestal at the corner of the Palazzo Braschi. And one of Pasquino's bitterest jests was directed against Olimpia Maldachini. Her name was cut in two, to make a good Latin pun: 'Olim pia, nunc impia,' 'once pious, now impious,' or 'Olimpia, now impious,' as one chose to join or separate the syllables. Whole books have been filled with the short and pithy imaginary conversations between Marforio, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... it is going begging—grovelling for something which the other party has not got to give; if groundless, is it not a fulfilling of the homely old saw relating to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face? (We disclaim any intent to pun.) In either case it is such a full and whole-souled giving of himself, or herself, away on the part of the patient; while on that of its object—is he, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... as your ladyship,' says he, 'is mistress of all sorts of spells.' But this was Dr. Swift's pun, and ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... as much as to say, the tough old knight hath a habit of swearing," said the keeper, grinning at a pun, which has been repeated since his time; "but who can help it? it comes of use and wont. Were you now, in your bodily self, to light suddenly on a Maypole, with all the blithe morris-dancers prancing around it to the merry pipe and tabor, with bells jingling, ribands fluttering, lads frisking ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott |
