"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mood, and sometimes means the Key. Our Author in this Section is fond of a Pun, which cannot well be translated. Tono is sometimes writ Tuono and Tuono signifies Thunder; therefore the Ignorant answers, he knows no other Tuono but that ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... 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
... 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 into a camera-obscura—you ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... facsimile of one of the epistolary efforts of that "baby-faced" Caroline beauty who was accustomed to sign herself "L duchesse de Portsmout." It is better still in the letter from Walpole to General Conway in chap. xl. of The Virginians, which is perfect, even to the indifferent pun of sleepy (and overrated) George Selwyn. But the crown and top of these pastiches is certainly the delightful paper, which pretends to be No. 341 of the Spectator for All Fools' Day, 1712, in which Colonel Esmond treats "Mistress Jocasta-Beatrix," to ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... sir," he replied, too earnest to notice Stalky's atrocious pun. "If a slaver runs slaves through British territory he ought to pretend that they're his servants. Hawkin' 'em about in the Fork—the forked stick that you put round their necks, you know—is insolence—same as not backing your topsails in the old ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... I predict—" I began, when my villainous pun was arrested in mid-utterance by the voice of Captain Tolliver, suddenly becoming the ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... bowl we pass, And joke and wit and whim abound, When song and catch and friend and lass In sparkling wine we toast around, When Bull and Pun Rude riot run, And finding still the mirth increasing, Pealing laughter roars sans ceasing, I peal and roar and pant and say, Thus let me laugh ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... inexhaustible source of amusing varieties. There are many ways of bringing about this interference, I mean of bracketing in the same expression two independent meanings that apparently tally. The least reputable of these ways is the pun. In the pun, the same sentence appears to offer two independent meanings, but it is only an appearance; in reality there are two different sentences made up of different words, but claiming to be one and the same because ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... allusion and pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled, no doubt, by my facetiously, he translates "mettant, comme on l'a tres-judicieusement fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la clef." The great work and the great author alluded ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... old English historians write of Jeanne d'Arc, the Pucelle, as 'the Puzel.' The author of the 'First Part of Henry VI.,' whether he was Shakespeare or not, has a pun on ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... drawled Jack. "This—er, what shall I call him?—stopped me to tell me he was going to rub the marks off me, at the same time wittily making a pun on my name. I was just telling him to hurry, or I'd ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... 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, clothes and the dozen and one ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... we have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... Admiral next time he makes a pun, I do not know that just now I need such a service. By to-morrow, though, or the next day, I may think of one. Until then"—she held out her hand—"wait patiently, and be ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... could hear the gurgling of the water as it ran down the neck of the canteen. The man chuckled, "Branch's brigade ort to have a branch; blowed if it ortn't." He was pleased with himself for discovering something like a pun or two. ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... lost in this material age, When school boys trample on the Inspir'd Page, When coblers prove by syllogistick pun The soal they mend, and that of man are one; 'Twere waste of time to check the Muses' speed, For all the whys and wherefores of their creed; To show how prov'd the juices are the same That feed the body, and the ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... considered a spoke before it is put into its place, in the nave of the wheel at least? We often hear the observation, "Then I put in my spoke," &c. in the relation of an animated discussion. May I venture to suggest a pun on the preterite ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... things, and I would put my name to 'em chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... beautiful really and in themselves, because they are mere conceits; the analogies in them are fortuitous, depending not on the nature of the things themselves, but on the private fancy of the writer, having no more real and logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun; in plain English, untrue, only allowable to Juliets or Othellos; while their self-possession, almost their reason, is in temporary abeyance under the influence of joy or sorrow. Every one must feel the exquisite fitness ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Louise, not knowing her pun, "a thousand times," and she turned without further explanation to the gentleman: "When I tell Mr. Maxwell of this he will suffer as he ought, and that's saying a great deal, for not coming with me to-day. To think ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... 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
... the majority of the names of our hills, and Professor Edward Hitchcock, in commenting on their uncouthness, concluded his disapproval with a pun worth preserving, by saying, "Fortunately there are some summits in the State yet unnamed. It is to be hoped that men of taste will see to it that neither Tom, nor Toby, nor Bears, nor Rattlesnakes, nor Sugar Loaves shall be Saddled upon them." ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • 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, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Magpie or Town-Hall[1] repairs: Where, mindful of the nymph whose wanton eye Transfixed his soul and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping Penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff Regale ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... George Moore, thinks that Legrand is frankly a symbolist. We side with Mauclair in not trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula. He is anything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and also shockingly frank at times. Take the plate with a pun for a title, Le paing quotidien ("paing" is slang for "poing," a blow from the fist, and may also mean the daily bread). A masculine brute is with clinched fist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. He is well dressed. His silk hat is shiny, his mustache curled in the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of his savings) with which to buy a house in Paris, and I have charged Louis to find one in your neighborhood. My mother has given me thirty thousand francs for the furnishing, and I shall do my best not to disgrace the dear sister of my election—no pun intended. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... ignorance of one who is so new to the profession. As I have intimated, I am no more than an unworthy barrister, in the service of his Majesty, expressly sent from home on a particular errand. It it were not a pitiful pun, I might add, I ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 has wrung Dromio's ears so often that they have attained ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... more and more bitter. The Dominican Father Caccini preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" and this wretched pun upon the great astronomer's name ushered in sharper weapons; for, before Caccini ended, he insisted that "geometry is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies." The Church authorities ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... cooked on fireplaces 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 'em down in salt, and cooked up de lard. Us chillun got some of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... of his "Hear hims!" proud, too, of his vote, And lost virginity of oratory, Proud of his learning (just enough to quote), He revelled in his Ciceronian glory: With memory excellent to get by rote, With wit to hatch a pun or tell a story, Graced with some merit, and with more effrontery,[mq] "His country's pride," he came ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... 'en twenty uv the best, lidy, jus' to mike a start—an' I doan' wanter part wiv yer 'and-writin' niver. So jes' yer send two rustlers, wot means notes, of ten pun each, rigistered, to W. 'ickle spelt wiv a haitch, 2 H'apple Blossom Row, Coving Gardin, afore this toime ter-morrer. An' jes yer remember that h'as long as yer lives I've got yer bit of 'andwritin.' I ain't goin' ter use it, but some dye it ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... the Castle, who loved to find relaxation from the decorous gravities of polished life in the fumes of tobacco, the inspiration of whiskey toddy, and the infinite amusement of Lucian Gay's conversation and company. This was the genial hour when the good story gladdened, the pun flashed, and the song sparkled with jolly mirth or saucy mimicry. To-night, being Coningsby's initiation, there was a special general meeting of the Grumpy Club, in which everybody was to say the gayest things with the gravest face, and every laugh carried a forfeit. Lucian ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... differs from the version formerly received, which intimates that the epitaphs were written before Goldsmith arrived: whereas the pun, "the late Dr. Goldsmith" appears to have suggested the writing of the epitaphs. In the "Retaliation", Goldsmith has not spared the characters and failings of his associates, but has drawn them with satire, at once pungent and good-humoured. Garrick is smartly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... fire. Uncle Fountain, 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 ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... logomachies. That Socrates in fact discussed only ethical problems, and disclaimed all sympathy with speculations about things above our heads, made no difference: he was the best human embodiment of a hateful educational error. And similarly the assault upon Cleon, the "pun-pelleting of demagogues from Pnux," was partly due to the young aristocrat's instinctive aversion to the coarse popular leader, and to the broad mark which the latter presented to the shafts of satire, but equally, perhaps, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Excellent!" cried Miss Trafford, who was always the first in at the death of a pun. "Yes, indeed they did: poor old Lord Belton, with his rheumatism; and that immense General Grant, with his asthma; together with three 'single men,' and myself, were safely conveyed to ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reclines, 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... story of the life and love of Christ. And here, in this year of grace 635, in the city of Chang-an, and in all the region about the Yellow River, the good priest Thomas the Nestorian, whom the Chinese called O-lo-pun—the nearest approach they could give to his strange Syriac name—had his Christian mission-house, and was zealously bringing to the knowledge of a great and enlightened people the still greater and ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... plan of conquest—by taking town after town and fortress after fortress, and gradually plucking away all the supports before he attempted the capital. He expressed his resolution in a memorable pun or play upon the name of Granada, which signifies a pomegranate. "I will pick out the seeds of this pomegranate one by one," said ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... their dark whirlwinds to the levin brand; Conclusive tenderness; fraternal grog, Tidy conjunction; adamantine bog, Impetuous arrant toadstool; Thundering quince, Repentant dog-star, inessential Prince, Expound. Pre-Adamite eventful gun, Crush retribution, currant-jelly, pun, Oh! eligible Darkness, fender, sting, Heav'n-born Insanity, courageous thing. Intending, bending, scouring, piercing all, Death like pomatum, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... 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' ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... have been opposed not only to Rome but to the rest of humanity." Even Julian the Apostate, who designed to rebuild their Temple, raged at the doctrine of their election. Sinai, said the Rabbis with a characteristic pun, has evoked ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... "A pun, Umph? he makes puns, does he? funny boy, funny boy, I daresay. How does the Doctor like that, though? Make puns to him, he'd punish you, Umph? Stupid things puns—made one myself then, though—just like me. Well, give the Doctor my compliments—Mr. Frampton's—I ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... sat at meat, 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, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... acknowledging that his own reign had received both benefit and glory from it. The people of Alcala punningly said, the church of Toledo had never had a bishop of greater edification than Ximenes; and Erasmus, in a letter to his friend Vergara, perpetrates a Greek pun on the classic name of Alcala, intimating the highest opinion of the state of science there. The reclining statue of Ximenes, beautifully carved in alabaster, now ornaments his sepulchre in the College ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... going to say something right now," she smiled. "Jerry, and Michael, and I. We've been practising it in secret for a surprise for you. You just lie there and listen. It's the Doxology. Don't Laugh. No pun intended." ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... of light," from Michabo, "beyond a doubt!" In my poor opinion, whatever claims Michabo may have as an unique creator of earth and heaven—"God is Light,"—he owes his mythical aspect as a Hare to something other than an unconscious pun. In any case, according to Dr. Brinton, Michabo, regarded as a creator, is equivalent to Strachey's Ahone. This amount of corroboration, valeat quantum, I may claim, from the Potomac Indians, for the belief in Ahone on the James River. Dr. Brinton is ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... words; it was the truth they conveyed, pun-gently as it was expressed. But you shall not drive me off upon that, and so escape the expression of my deep gratitude, my—' he was on the verge now; he would not speak in the haste of his hot passion; he would weigh each word. He would; and his will was triumphant. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... take a much-needed holiday. Four unopened letters from Bridesdale were in his pocket, which he had saved for after dinner. At that meal, the young men of Mrs. Marsh's grown-up family rallied him on his lack of appetite and general depression. He had not made a pun for four days running, a thing unprecedented. Dinner over, he slipped away to his rooms, lit a pipe, and read the letters, the contents of two of which, three including the Squire's formal one, are already known. Another, in a fine clerkly hand, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... against laughing at Mr Gazebee's pun. "Why, his beard descends to his ankles, and he is obliged to tie it in a bag at night, because his feet get entangled in ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... 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 que si una parte ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... that Grandma's makin' Loads of mince and pun'kin pies? Don't you smell those goodies cookin'? Can't you see 'em? Where's your eyes? Tell that rooster there that's crowin', Cute folks now are keepin' mum; They don't show how fat they 're growin' When ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... which, ye must have 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 like mendicants, whose ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to stupefy Rodolphe a bit. 'This was Mimi's favorite 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
... cake—I much love. We sat down. Presently Miss Benje broke the silence by declaring herself quite of a different opinion from D'lsraeli, who supposes the differences of human intellect to be the mere effect of organization. She begged to know my opinion. I attempted to carry it off with a pun upon organ; but that went off very flat. She immediately conceived a very low opinion of my metaphysics; and turning round to Mary, put some question to her in French,—possibly having heard that neither Mary nor ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... at a pun," said "C." "I trust, however, you will not desert me, now your curiosity is ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... 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, where ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... charades &c. are invariably poor creatures; as are those who have a knack at finding out such trifles. The same remark applies to punsters. It is difficult for a man of sterling talent to perpetrate a pun, or to solve an enigma. On the latter account, Oedipus must ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... arranged the "Septet", now more than 20 years ago. And although Schuberth has given me but little cause to be satisfied with his editions, still I should not wish to do him any injury by this piece of business, [An untranslatable pun on the words Handel and Handel] and hence I have not sent him any reply. For the same reason I shall leave Peters' communication unanswered, and must get you, dear friend, to make these two gentlemen understand ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... [FN299] A pun upon "Khaliyah" (bee hive) and "Khaliyah" (empty). Khaliyah is properly a hive of bees with a honey-comb in the hollow of a tree-trunk, opposed to Kawwarah, hive made of clay or earth (Al-Hariri; Ass. of Tiflis). There ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... involves mental depression; our "blues" usually have an organic basis. It was not a superstition that evolved our word "melancholy" from the Greek "black (i.e., disordered) liver" nor is it a mere pun or paradox to say that whether life is worth living ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... 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 wines, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... influence upon us. There was no lightning in his disposition. He was a great laugher, but never at any recent merriment. It took a long while for him to understand a joke. Indeed, if it were subtle or elaborate, he never understood it. But give the doctor, when in good health, a plain pun or repartee, and let him have a day or two to think over it, and he would come in with uproarious merriment that well-nigh would choke him to death, if the paroxysm happened to take him with ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... his Homer at an enormous charge, he wrote a poem, the design of which is to prove that Solomon was the author of the Iliad; and it has been said that this was done to interest his wife, who had some property, to lend her aid towards the publication of so divine a work. This happy pun was ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 kind ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... you're a sveet cove," rejoined Jack, "and no vun vould suppose for a moment that you cut Sal Gordon's throat, the night you coaxed her hoff to marry her, just because you took a fancy to a couple of five-pun notes she had in her trash-bag that she refused to give hup afore the knot ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... history by saying, I went to a North Country school, where I was noted for my aptness in learning; and my skill at 'prisoner's base,'—upon my word I purposed no pun! I was intended for the Church. Wishing, betimes, to instruct myself in its ceremonies, I persuaded my schoolmaster's maidservant to assist me towards promoting a christening. My father did not like this premature love for the sacred rites. He took me home; and wishing ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... friend of his a memorial—slight, but such as the circumstances allowed—of an evening spent with Charles and Mary Lamb, in the winter of 1821-22. The record is of the most unambitious character; it pretends to nothing, as the reader will see, not so much as to a pun, which it really required some singularity of luck to have missed from Charles Lamb, who often continued to fire puns, as minute guns, all through the evening. But the more unpretending this record is, the more appropriate it becomes by ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... in 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
... steward to bring his wife. He denied in vain that he had one, but brought her at last, and while every one else was talking gayly at the feast she was silent. The king observed it and asked her the cause of her silence; and she answered with a pun on her name: "Vineyard I was and Vineyard I am, I was loved and no longer am: I know not for what reason the Vineyard has lost its season." Her husband, who heard this, replied: "Vineyard thou wast and Vineyard thou art, loved thou wast and no longer art: the Vineyard ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... for in the name of the cursores I see the raw material of many sad jokes—whereunto I pray I may never be tempted, but may leave them for an easy exercise for such as have set out upon the shameless career of the irreclaimable pun-flinger. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... was that humorist - the first that made a pun at all - Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all - How popular at dinners must that ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... 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
... bird with white breast and red beak and legs): "Ghurab" (Heb. Oreb) connects with Ghurbahstrangerhood, exile, and "Bayn" with distance, interval, disunion, the desert (between the cultivated spots). There is another and a similar pun anent the Ban-tree; the first word meaning ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... years later at a dinner in China. To appreciate this witticism, one may refer to the New York directory of 1789, which describes John Slidell, the father of the Slidell of whom we are speaking, as "soap boiler and chandler, 104 Broadway." Miss Fairlie's pun seems to me to be quite equal to that of Rufus Choate, who, when a certain Baptist minister described himself as "a candle of the Lord," remarked, "Then you are a dipped, but I hope not a wick-ed candle." It is ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Mr. Orkins, sir, that's for future occasions. This 'ere present one, in orferin' fourteen pun, you've let the cat out o' the bag, and what I could ha' done had you consulted me sooner I can't do now; I could ha' got him for a fi'-pun note at one time, but they've worked on your feelins, and, mark my words, they'll ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... merchandise and meat in the Forum, until Apronius, prefect of the city, prohibited the practice in the following terms, as appears by an old inscription, which is particularly interesting as containing an admirable pun: "Sub exagio potius pecora vendere quam digitis concludentibus tradere": "Sell your sheep by the balance, and do not bargain or deceive" (tradere having both these meanings) "by opening and shutting your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... was their old-time pun upon the foreman's name. He got to his feet and approached. "It does me good," he ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... che Sapia Fosse chiamata." The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian name may possibly remind its readers of sapienza (sapience), there is the difference of a v in the adjective savia, which is also accented ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... 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 ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of contempt and derision, applied to symbolic bearings that are assumed without the authority of the Heralds' College. In many cases they allude to the name or occupation of the bearer: the motto is probably a pun upon the figures contained in the shield, or some technical expression used by the parties in their ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... an English equivalent?) "Euhemeristic" also found me somewhat on my beam-ends, though explanation is here given; yet I felt I could do without Euhemerus; and you perhaps without the humerous. You can pardon me now; for so bad a pun places me at your mercy indeed. But seriously, simple English in prose writing and in all narrative poetry (however monumental language may become in abstract verse) seems to me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of German innovations. ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... 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 pedestrian, coat ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... propensity to punning, a species of wit at which he was particularly happy, for puns fell as thick from him as leaves from autumn bowers; and he further entertained them with an account of the intention he had some short time back of petitioning for the office of pun-purveyor to his late Majesty; but that before he could write the last line—"And your petitioner will ever pun" it was bestowed upon a Yeoman of the Guard. Still, however, said he, I have an idea of opening ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... scratched a section of wire bare. He laughed to himself as he slipped the little microphone out of his left ear. Now he was half deaf as well as half lame—he was literally giving himself to this cause. He would have to remember the pun to tell Alec Diger later, if there was a later. Alec had a profound ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... and little body, of which 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 ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... just 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 when it doesn't understand, and says, "But I don't know. The thoughts come, and ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... Constable), seems to have taken up as an order for instant execution. This he performed upon the spot, plunging his dagger repeatedly into Osorio, or, as Hulderico Schmidel has it, 'sewing him up with cuts' ('cosiendole a punaladas'). This murder or execution — for who shall tell when murder finishes and its legal counterpart begins? — rendered Don Pedro very unpopular with all the fleet; for, as Schmidel has it in his history,* ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... your 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
... a scheming, calculating Yankee, I should have been rich now; but all my life I have been too generous and confiding. I have always let principle stand between me and my interests." Mr. Leckler took himself all too seriously to be conscious of his pun, and went on: "Now this is a matter in which my duty and my principles seem to conflict. It stands thus: Josh has been doing a piece of plastering for Mr. Eckley over in Lexington, and from what he says, I think that city rascal has misrepresented ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... you," he said, and looked round the court with a smile. But no one spoke. "It's a pun," he added in a fierce tone, then all ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... week to office-boys. That's five 'pun' in your money, I believe. But, meanwhile, now that I'm in London, I have some business with Mr. Peebleby." Mitchell produced an American silver dollar and forced it into the boy's hand, whereupon the latter blinked in a dazed manner, then hazarded the opinion that Mr. Peebleby might be ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... resemblance, 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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, or ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... said Timon; but Apemantus stayed a while longer and told him he had a passion for extremes, which was true. Apemantus even made a pun, but there was no good laughter to be ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... we are quits: that's for your Dog Star. I suppose you think nobody can make a pun or a pill, in the ship, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Puckaway late in the evening of our second day from Butte des Morts. Here lived a white man named Gleason, the same concerning whom, owing to his vast powers of exaggeration, poor Hooe was fond of uttering his little pun, "All is not gold that Gleasons." We did not seek shelter at his house, for, late as the season was, we found the shore so infested with mosquitoes that we were glad to choose a spot as far as possible from the bank, and make ourselves ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... to have his mother christened. It was done. They called her Molly. [Footnote: The Indians pronounce the word Marie Mahli or Molly. Mahlinskwess, "Miss Molly," sounds like Mon-in-kwess, a woodchuck. Hence this very poor pun.] Therefore to this day all woodchucks are called Molly. They went down to the shore; to please the king Glooskap drew all the ships into the sea again. So the king gave him what he wanted, and he returned home. Since that time white men have come ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... fears to use 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 Burnet—struck my eye very forcibly and pleasingly. 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... turning to the lieutenant. "We have struck the right man. But he don't mean that I am any wickeder than the rest of the world. I used to be called here by my last name, and Job invented the pun ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Hibernicism|!; slipslop[obs3]; anticlimax, bathos; sophism &c. 477. farce, galimathias[obs3], amphigouri[obs3], rhapsody; farrago &c (disorder) 59; betise[Fr]; extravagance, romance; sciamachy[obs3]. sell, pun, verbal quibble, macaronic[obs3]. jargon, fustian, twaddle, gibberish &c (no meaning) 517; exaggeration &c 549; moonshine, stuff; mare's nest, quibble, self-delusion. vagary, tomfoolery, poppycock, mummery, monkey trick, boutade[Fr], escapade. V. play the fool &c. 499; talk nonsense, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... all the thrilling tales he told, For all the tunes the fiddle knew, For all the glorious nights of old We boys and he have rollicked through, For laughter all unknown to wealth That roared responsive to a pun, A hale, ripe age and ruddy health ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... hearing the word "aches" pronounced as a dissyllable, although the line imperatively demands it; and Shakspeare shows that the word was not unusually so pronounced, as he introduces it with the same quantity in the prose dialogue of "Much Ado about Nothing," and makes it the vehicle of a pun which certainly argues that it was familiar to the public ear as ache and not ake. When Hero asks Beatrice, who complains that she is sick, what she is sick for,—a hawk, a hound, or a husband,—Beatrice replies, that she is sick for—or of—that which begins them all, an ache,—an H. Indeed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... sat down again, and, for the first time since his last contract but one, a smile played lightly about the corners of his mouth. He took another drink and, shaking his head slightly as he put the glass down, smiled again with the air of a man who has been reproached for making a pun. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... one of Mora, which they pursue with surprising ardour, and at which they will stake everything they possess. It is a destructive kind of gambling, requiring no accessories but the ten fingers, which are always—I intend no pun- -at hand. Two men play together. One calls a number—say the extreme one, ten. He marks what portion of it he pleases by throwing out three, or four, or five fingers; and his adversary has, in the same instant, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Astraea tread, 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 poet's work is done, Alike to them, by pathos or by pun. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... they aint particular now-a-days chunks o' cabbages, and scarcity, and pun'kin, and that all the sass that ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 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 |
