"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... like most Englishmen, could take in a pun by the ear, but wit only by the eye. "Do you remember when Mrs. Bazalgette put you into the linen sponge, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... pun might be a serious thing: witness the play in the last stanza on the words son and sun—not a mere pun, for the Son of the Father is the Sun of Righteousness: he is Life ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... man who writ this wretched pun," says Mr D., "would have picked your pocket:" which he proceeds to shew not only bad in itself, but doubly so on so solemn an occasion. And yet, in that excellent play of Liberty Asserted, we find something very much resembling a pun in the mouth of a mistress, who is parting with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... infinite sleights and evasions, of a picked phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry.' He had the mind of a harlequin; his wit was acrobatic, and threw somersaults. He took in a character at a glance, and threw a pun at you as dexterously as a fly-fisher casts his fly over a trout's nose. 'How finely,' says Hazlitt, in his best and heartiest mood; 'how finely, how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the "Southampton!" ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... which only wants widening to be quite charming. At the end of this, however, I found swamp the second, and out of this having been helped by a grinning facetious personage, most appropriately named Pun, I returned home in dudgeon, in spite of what dear Miss M—— calls the 'moral suitability' of finding a foul bog at the end of every charming wood path or forest ride ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... to pun, we may dismiss the claims of palmistry offhand. Normally the lines of the hand do not change from birth to death, but character does change. The hand, its shape and its texture are markedly influenced by illness,[1] toil and care. And gait, carriage, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... understood what the 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 ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... but it is believed that Peter was trying to build up the woman's name, Emma, into a pun upon the word "dilemma." The secret, however, is buried in ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... 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. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... does not retain the water. The land which was to have formed the bed of the lake is all in tillage; and I had some conversation with the man who cultivated it. He told me that the wall had been built with the money of sin, and not the money of piety (pap ke paisa se, na pun ke paisa se bana), that the man who built it must have laid out his money with a worldly, and not a religious mind (niyat); that on such occasions men generally assembled Brahmans and other deserving people, and fed and clothed them, and thereby consecrated a great work, and made it acceptable ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... 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 the Elizabethans, and its relative unimportance for the history ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... 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 meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... thing I have against Griswold," declared Jack. "He will pun in the most reckless manner at all times. Some of his jokes are not what they are ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... the Act of Grace which had been passed in 1690. Yet a member was not ashamed to say, "No matter: impeach him; and force him to plead the Act." Few, however, were disposed to take a course so unworthy of a House of Commons. Some wag cried out, "Burn it; burn it;" and this bad pun ran along the benches, and was received with shouts of laughter. It was moved that the Pastoral Letter should be burned by the common hangman. A long and vehement debate followed. For Burnet was a man warmly loved as well as warmly hated. The ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a long 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
... pun thee into shivers] Pun is in the midland counties the vulgar and colloquial word ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... and woo, and fight and joke, Perhaps you'll pun! Such feats are never done by folk Before ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Alexander took less time to annex Asia than Isocrates spent in writing an oration, to bid the Greeks attack Persia, we know what he would have thought of Macaulay's antithesis. He blames Xenophon for a poor pun, and Plato, less justly, for mere figurative badinage. It would be an easy task to ransack contemporaries, even great contemporaries, for similar failings, for pomposity, for the florid, for sentences like processions of intoxicated torch-bearers, for pedantic display of cheap ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... The pun was new to the Seigneur, and he turned to the Cure chuckling. "Think of that, Cure! He knows the classics." He laughed till the tears came ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was years after this that he met Macready at Talfourd's, and by way 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
... but 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, pretty much ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... she be. 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 was ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... tongue. (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
... cover of this pun, the amiable clergyman retired, unconscious, I presume, of his prosaic effect upon the atmosphere of the region. With this intrusion of the commonplace, I suffered an eclipse of faith as to Evangeline, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ago would not have found out that we were descended from this Vere, at least from his name and ministry: my comfort is, that Lancerona was Earl Robert's second wife. But in this search I have crossed upon another descent, which I am taking great pains to verify (I don't mean a pun)., and that is a probability of my being descended from Chaucer, whose daughter, the Lady Alice, before her espousals with Thomas Montagute,'Earl of Salisbury, and afterwards with William de la Pole, the great Duke of Suffolk, (another famous favourite), was married ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... another woman looks at him!... I see red—green would be a better colour—because he prefers to have his valet brush his hair. I don't know that I didn't reduce the holding capacity of this house by a storey—there's a pun for you!—so as to engineer my hated rival being left at home in Wilton Place. Is that lovely murrey-coloured stuff in the cut-glass jar quince marmalade? No! I won't pamper Bingo, if he is the idol of my soul. And please don't ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... "he isn't hurt: the article belonged to his mother and her sister; the brother-in-law isn't on good terms; so he demanded a public sale. She will get back four pun ten out of it." Here the clerk put in his word. "And there's five pounds paid, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... A poor pun started another vein. "You must hear some of Miss Cobbe's puns," said Miss Hosmer, and they were so daringly, glaring bad, as to be very good. When lame from a sprain, she was announced by a pompous butler at a reception as "Miss ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... 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 during the week, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... or pulses; either some actual amount of it, or none, being apprehended. This amount is the datum or gabe which reality feeds out to our intellectual faculty; but our intellect makes of it a task or aufgabe—this pun is one of the most memorable of Kant's formulas—and insists that in every pulse of it an infinite number of successive minor pulses shall be ascertainable. These minor pulses we can indeed go on to ascertain ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... tried to make his usual pun on the name of Ortruda, but was "countered" by Young JUMPER who protested that he had heard it before and never wanted to hear it again. "I know what you're going to say," he exclaimed; "it's something about 'aught ruder!' I know!" "I've no doubt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... 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 puns in PUNCHINELLO ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... lieutenant-governorship, of course. Davis ought to be attorney-general, but he'll be beaten by Wray. It's the party reward. Davis is the better lawyer, by long odds, but Wray has stuck to the party like a burr—I don't mean a pun, if ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... there was any merit in it, any more than there would have been in refusing to drink a nauseous dose; but, really, I felt that I was fulfilling a stern duty (no pun intended) in turning my back short ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... however, he 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 have brought him ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... moreover had borne the reputation of being a drunkard and a domestic tyrant ... "and a cultured man into the bargain!".... (Here Kupfer laughed in a self-satisfied manner, by way of hinting at the pun he had made);[60]—that he had left at his death, in the first place, a widow of the merchant class, a thoroughly stupid female, straight out of one of Ostrovsky's comedies;[61] and in the second place, a daughter much older than Clara and bearing no resemblance to her—a very clever girl ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... he'll stand out wi' me any 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 ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Jock, an' efter han' He buckled til his ain wark, For sune a' owre the kintra-side They kent aboot his bane wark, An' hoo a law-wer fleggit Jock At Corkie's instigation, An' gart him pay a five-pun' note By ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... know-at least I can tell 'ee—that my old chum Willum is as rich as a East Injin nabob. You wouldn't believe, madam, what fortins some gold-diggers have made. W'y, I've seed men light their pipes with fi'-pun' notes for a mere brag out there. I've made a goodish lump o' money myself too,—a'most more than I know what to do with, an' as to Willum, I may say he's actooally rollin' in gold. He's also chockfull of regard for you and yours, ma'am. That bein' so, he's sure to send you somethin' to tide ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... fortune by the sale of mourning snuff-boxes, whereon the portrait of the young Queen, in a black frame of shagreen, gave rise to the pun: "Consolation in chagrin." All the fashions, and every article of dress, received names expressing the spirit of the moment. Symbols of abundance were everywhere represented, and the head-dresses of the ladies were surrounded by ears of wheat. Poets sang of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Cockburn. Radcliffe(19) I know not, and Barnard(20) I never see. Walls will certainly be stingier for seven years, upon pretence of his robbery. So Stella puns again; why, 'tis well enough; but I'll not second it, though I could make a dozen: I never thought of a pun since I left Ireland.—Bishop of Clogher's bill? Why, he paid it to me; do you think I was such a fool to go without it? As for the four shillings, I will give you a bill on Parvisol for it on t'other ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... other poems for other hours. Some day when you wish a bit of fun with your children you will find humorous poems in many of the books. One is in Volume IV, on page 57. Nearly every stanza contains a "joke": a pun, if you please, usually. Perhaps you and your children will find them all easily, and perhaps you will not. In the last stanza is the "joke" proper, the thing for which the rhymes were written. It is an old ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... pun on this word. It is never done in really good sporting society. But you can make a few remarks, here and there, about the comparative merits of twelve-bore and sixteen-bore. Choose a good opening for telling your story of the man who shot with a fourteen-bore ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... talking. But Balzac talked only little. He let others talk, laughed at intervals, silently, in the savage manner of Leather-stocking, or else, he burst out like a bomb, if the sentence pleased him. It needed to be pretty broad, and was never too broad. He melted with pleasure, especially at a silly pun inspired by his ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... have agreed in supposing it possessed nothing remarkable but dulness and obstinacy. Lucian exercised his genius on a fly; and Erasmus has dignified Folly in his Encomium Moriae, which, for the sake of the pun, he inscribed to Sir Thomas More. The subject of Michael Psellus is a Gnat; Antonius Majoragius took for his theme Clay; Julius Scaliger wrote concerning a Goose; Janus Dousa on a Shadow; and Heinsius (horresco ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... 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
... [Footnote 33: The pun on "cant" and "recant" was not original, though Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Townshend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Mary Wood, and wrote an overture called "Marie des Bois," and after this atrocious pun, married the poor girl in 1844, and they lived happily ever after, or at ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... 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 ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Latin pun, or rather a punning Latinism, not altogether out of Shakespeare's earliest line. But see the note preceding ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... absurdities of "Griffith Gaunt" are most amusingly brought out in "Liffith Lank"; and as the little work makes the reader laugh at the great one, he has no right, perhaps, to ask more of it, or to complain that it trusts too much to the facile pun for its effects, which are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... colored. "I recant," said he, bluntly; and everybody saw what had operated his conversion. That is a pun. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... as a good-sized hotel," said the Don. "Then," he continued, "there's Bedford ditto again—septennel would do for that; then comes Northampton—they don't want no law there at all." (I leave the obvious pun to anyone who likes to make it). "Then Okeham again—did you ever hear of anyone who came from ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... wordy beast, As 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
... 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 ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... 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 ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... - the first that made a pun at all - Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all - How popular at dinners must that humorist ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... had been done, to have the laugh of fellows thinking themselves such razors. They compensated him for the slavish abasement of his whole neighbourhood under the hectoring of the grand new manufacture of wit in London:—the inimitable Metropolitan PUN, which came down to the country by four-in-hand, and stopped all other conversation wherever it was reported, and would have the roar—there was no resisting it. Indeed, to be able to see the thing smartly was an entry ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a Rhodian, who lived before 300 B.C. The verses are graduated so as to form a pair of wings. "The first altar," written by Dosiadas of Rhodes, is the earliest instance of a Greek acrostic, or of any one which formed words. An acrostic is a play upon spelling, as a pun is upon sound; and in both cases the complication is too slight for real humour. They are rather to be considered as ingenious works of fancy. The first specimens are those in the Psalms—twelve ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... years ago, with Japanese youth, I became an eager listener to their folk lore and fireside stories. When later, during a residence of nearly four years among the people, my eyes were opened to behold the wondrous fertility of invention, the wealth of literary, historic and classic allusion, of pun, myth and riddle, of heroic, wonder, and legendary lore in Japanese art, I at once set myself to find the source of the ideas expressed in bronze and porcelain, on lacquered cabinets, fans, and even crape paper napkins and tidies. Sometimes I discovered the originals of the artist's ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... but his trachea did. The chuckle rose no higher than the rings of the wind-pipe, and then it was vigorously thrust back again by the impulse of gravity into the region of his heart, and gladdened it with hidden mirth in its dark centre. The Dominie loved a pun; whether it was let off in English, Greek, or Latin. The last two were made by nobody but himself, and not being understood, were, of course, relished by himself alone. But his love of a pun was a serious attachment: he loved it with a solemn affection—with ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... comparing the animation of Fleet Street with the desolation of the Hebrides. It was from Bolt Court Boswell drove Johnson to dine with General Paoli, a drive memorable for the fact that on that occasion Johnson uttered his first and only recorded pun. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... goods to two ladies in crinolines, with a small dog. I closed the glass; I could see no 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
... 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 was removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main[22]. As it was, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Punch made stock, with his friendship for Moore and his literary turn, as well as his ambition to serve his country like a true Russell, was at this date wooing and wedding the fair young widow, Lady Ribblesdale, his devotion to whom had drawn from the wags a profane pun. They called the gifted little lord "the widow's mite." When the marriage ceremony was being performed between him and Lady Ribblesdale the wedding-ring fell from the bride's finger—an evil omen soon fulfilled for the marriage tie was speedily broken by her early death. "Plain ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... strong horns, able to ram down most powerfully cities and towns? [Quid enim magnopere mirandum est si vervecum, in patria valida nascantur cornua quae urbes et oppida arietare valentissime possint? Besides the pun, there is some geographical allusion, or allusion of military history, which it is difficult to make out.] Learn you, already from your early age, to weigh and discern great characters not by force and animal strength, but ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... said 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 deep divin', ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... thought himself a wag but who forgot every morning what he had wagged about the day before, would say for his daily greeting, "Wie [as the Germans say] befinden sie sich?" He thought the pun on sea-sick was awfully funny, and would laugh uproariously. He said to Mr. Palmer, "Why are you not like a melon?" We all guessed. One person said, "Because he was not meloncholic [Aulick]." But all the guesses were wrong. "No," said the captain, "it is because the melon ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Aigues, and the local citizens having become more or less opposed to him, the general sold his property, and it fell to the three associates. Rigou was selfish, avaricious but pleasure-loving; he looked like a condor. His name was often the subject of a pun, and he was called Grigou (G. Rigou—a miserly man). "Deep as a monk, silent as a Benedictine, crafty as a priest, this man would have been a Tiberius in Rome, a Richelieu under Louis XIII. or a Fouche under ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... perchance become quite mouldy, or will he bring them out as an oeuvre posthume [posthumous work]? I am tired of doing silent homage to this noble mode of proceedings, and intend next time to help the publisher out of all his perplexities [Untranslatable pun on "Verleger" and "Verlegenheiten."] by putting the manuscripts back ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... shouldering the odium of unpopular acts. [Sidenote: May, 1521] When the Duke of Buckingham was executed for the crime of standing next in succession to the throne, Wolsey was blamed; many people thought, as it was put in a pun attributed to Charles V, that "it was a pity so noble a buck should have been slain by such a hound." Wolsey lost the support of the nobles by the pride that delighted to humble them, and of the commons by the avarice that accumulated a corrupt fortune. But, though the rich hated him for his ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... grace, who never wanted wit! The stage how loosely does Astraea[152] tread, 290 Who fairly puts all characters to bed: And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws, To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause! But fill their purse, our poets' work is done, Alike to them, by pathos or by pun. ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... from the banks of this river; but one day, The[)o]clos observed that the branches of a fig tree bent into the stream, and it immediately flashed into his mind that the Messenian word for fig tree and goat was the same. The pun or equivoke will be better understood by an English reader if for goat we read ewe, and bear in mind that yew is to the ear the same ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... were numberless; and not to be escaped. Words are too equivocal and phrases too indefinite, for men like him not to profit by their ambiguity. To them a quirk in the sense is as profitable as a pun or a quibble in the sound. They snap at them, as dogs do at flies. It is no less worthy of observation that, though some of his actions seemed to laugh severity of moral principle out of countenance, he continually repeated others which, had his conduct been ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... was their old-time pun upon the foreman's name. He got to his feet and approached. "It does me good," ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... 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
... treasury is empty," said Sinton, laughing at his pun. "Well, well, we might make it go, boys. I'm not a millionaire, but never mind. How ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... reputation as an author, how publishers were ready to outbid one another for the very dregs of his wit. Thomas Brabine was but voicing the general opinion when, in some verses prefixed to Menaphon, he wrote, condescending to an inevitable pun, but also to a ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... no luck," said the impenitent carpenter. "Nobody ever left me no money. Nobody ever left me so much as a fi-pun note." ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... the latter word with an emphasis which rendered it questionable if he did not mean to pun; the more especially as he threw down his reckoning and instantly left the field to the quiet possession of Nightingale. The latter, after a short pause, resumed his narrative, though, either from weariness or some other cause, it was observed that his voice ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... submission for the fault he had committed, at his own court. His conduct reminds us of Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an ambassador—that he is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. A pun upon ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... cold or in penitence for the pun, he walked over to the windows to pull down the shades. But before he did so he looked out into the night, his breath making a frosty vapor on the pane. Below him the Square gleamed in white patches under the arc-lamps, and across these white patches here and there a belated ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... though deaf: so deaf, indeed, that it was a painful effort to talk with him, as we were obliged to drop our pearls into a huge ear-trumpet. From this courteous and kind-hearted man of letters, (I hope, the German literati in general may resemble this first specimen), I heard a tolerable Italian pun, and an interesting anecdote. When Buonaparte was in Italy, having been irritated by some instance of perfidy, he said in a loud and vehement tone, in a public company—"'tis a true proverb, gli Italiani tutti ladroni"—(that is, the Italians ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... stirred, at that word. Words used in contrast with one another are given opposing effect by contrasting emphasis: "Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more." "My words fly up; my thoughts remain below." When words are used with a double meaning, as in the case of a pun, or with a peculiar implication, or are repeated for some peculiar effect of mere repetition,—when we have, in any form, what is called a play upon words,—a peculiar pointedness is given, wherein the circumflex inflection plays a large part. "Now is it Rome indeed ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Dr. Upround, holding council with himself; "evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is—without meaning any pun. I can read this ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... 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
... had spent a month in the Desert of What-you-call-it, you see," continued Mr. Redmond. "I desired very much to come down to the boat and obtain a draught of cold water. I didn't expect to obtain a draft on a gold bank then—ha, ha! you see? Not bad—eh? Even a gentleman can't help making a pun sometimes, you see." ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... Academy, should be the leaven, the yeast, to work upon our great metropolis; not merely the flower, but the self-raising flour"—a pause for appreciation of the pun—"the self-raising flour [loud laughter, easily yielded and unnecessarily prolonged] that is to lift yourselves, and the city with you, from the abyss of no-art, and from the still deeper abyss of false art. That's where we're groping; that's where we're floundering. I declare, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... is a kind of tame cat here, runs in and out as he likes, and plays escort when I'm slumming or attending meetings. I hope you'll like him. He's not such a fool as he looks, and though he does clip his 'Gees'—sounds like a pun, doesn't it?—and cuts his sentences short, he—he is very ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... upbringing an' edication of un. I mean him to be brought up to a power o' knowledge, for theer's nothin' like it. Doan't you think I be gwaine to shirk doin' the right thing by un', Miller, 'cause it aint so. If 'twas my last fi'-pun' note was called up for larnin' ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... corroboration of Marco's story, but giving a different form to the pun, has been found by Mr. W.F. Mayers, of the Diplomatic Department in China, in a Chinese compilation dating from the latter part of the 14th century. Under the heading, "A Kiang-nan Prophecy," this book states that prior to the fall of the Sung a prediction ran through ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 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. ii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... of the comic seem to consist of little more than a shock of surprise: a pun is a sort of jack-in-the-box, popping from nowhere into our plodding thoughts. The liveliness of the interruption, and its futility, often please; dulce est desipere in loco; and yet those who must endure the society of inveterate jokers ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... a kind of pun in these words, as Madame Dacier has already remarked; for Chrysos, which signifies gold, was also a frequent name for a slave. In one of Lucian's dialogues, there is, I think, a similar play upon the word, where the followers of Chrysippus are called golden fishes. The puns of the ancients ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... that the Negritos have no slaves and know nothing of slavery, the reverse is true, in Zambales at least; so say the Negritos and also the Filipinos who have spent several years among them. The word "a-li'-pun" is used among them to express such social condition. As has been stated, a man caught stealing may become a slave, as also may a person captured from another rancheria, a child left without support, a person ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... wine,' said he, 'we have 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! She ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... we have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents acquainted ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... Roman character than volumes of description, for it was here that the pasquinades were published, by affixing them to a pedestal at the corner of the Palazzo Braschi. And one of Pasquino's bitterest jests was directed against Olimpia Maldachini. Her name was cut in two, to make a good Latin pun: 'Olim pia, nunc impia,' 'once pious, now impious,' or 'Olimpia, now impious,' as one chose to join or separate the syllables. Whole books have been filled with the short and pithy imaginary conversations between Marforio, the statue of a river god which used to stand in ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the ice-box?" inquired the King, his humor getting the better of his anger, for he could never let go by an opportunity to make a pun. ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory
... 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 ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... old pun?—Begin beside yourself, and end beside your horse! I am sure he is not strong enough to sit over those rocks. No, you shall stay at home comfortably here; Valencia and I will ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... outside Marguerite Audoux's house after my first visit to her. "Tiens," he said, "tu viens de la mansarde de Genie l'ouvriere." And the clever little pun was true. Marguerite Audoux is a genius, and she does not understand what people mean when they ask her "how" she "writes." She opens her weak eyes very wide at the question, laughs as a child laughs ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... leave, the b—y sans culotte" returned the captain, putting himself in a better humor with his own pun. "But did you see nothing of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... frailty of the material operates to some extent in disgusting us with wax-work. A higher temperature of the atmosphere, it strikes us too forcibly, would dispose the waxen figures to melt; and in colder seasons the horny fist of a jolly boatswain would 'pun[5] them into shivers' like so many ship-biscuits. The grandeur of permanence and durability transfers itself or its expression from the material to the impression of the artifice which moulds it, and crystallizes itself ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... well for the writer of the above-mentioned leaderette had he referred to the ninth of ELIA's Popular Fallacies, and been thereby reminded how "a pun is a pistol let off at the ear; and not a feather to tickle the intellect." The Baron is prepared to admit that the lesson to be learned from this delightful Essay of CHARLES LAMB's is, that a pun once let off, has fizzled off, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... fol- lowing important restrictions: In accordance with Statutes of 1883, Chapter 268, any officer, agent, or servant of any corporation or association, who confers, or authorizes [15] to be conferred, any diploma or degree, shall be pun- ished by a fine not less than five hundred dollars and not ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... to the opinion that it's better t' boy should not go out any more wi' t' dorgs. Let 'em bide at home, I'll take 'em oot when they need it. If Bess takes it into her head to pin a coo there might be trouble, an I doan't want trouble. Her last litter o' pups brought me a ten pun note, and if they had her oop at 'a court and swore her life away as a savage brute, which she ain't no way, it would pretty ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... (like the 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. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 more helpful ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... 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 in ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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 ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... and deny 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, from pride and from prejudice free; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith |
