"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good pun, or what a bad one?" asked Bouldon with perfect simplicity. "But, I say, Gregson, are there any other fish but your friends, the newts, in this pond, do you think? because if there are not, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Byron's work; it often begins well, and usually has some vivid description of nature, or some gallant passage in swinging verse, which stirs us like martial music; then the poem falls to earth like a stone, and presently appears some wretched pun or jest or scurrility. Our present remedy lies in a book of selections, in which we can enjoy the poetry without being unpleasantly reminded of the author's besetting sins of flippancy ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Puck! Thou hast been to Philadelphia, where all the streets rhyme, and every corner is a pun upon the next. May the fiend unquip ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... him cautious. He was nicknamed, for two reasons, "captain of crows." In the first place, he could smell powder a league off, and took wing at the sound of a musket; secondly, the nickname was based on an innocent military pun, which his position in the regiment warranted. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious Montefiore family of Milan (though the laws of the Kingdom of Italy forbade him to bear his title in the French service) was ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... smart Paris frock to land in, and meet "Larry": also hat. She looked a dream, and felt one. Every woman did her best in the clothes line (I don't mean a pun), but Mrs. Shuster transcended us all. You can't think what she was like in one of the new-fashioned dresses, and a close-winged hat with a long stick-out thing behind exactly the shape and size of a setting ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... don't understand what you're talking about!" he says. "But I fancy it's a pun of some sort! Very well, then, what did the ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... this daring act of marine horsemanship in progress, that "I hope the horse won't founder"—meaning to pun on the latter word. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... dvipa as "brahman," "bird," and "tooth" suggests "Zweigeboren," p. 423, and more instances might be adduced. It is not to be wondered at that such poetizing should often degenerate into the most inane trifling, so that we get such rhyming efforts as that on p. 326 with its pun on the similarity of hima "winter" with hema "gold," Himalaya and himavat with Himmel and Heimat, or that on p. 385 with its childish juxtaposition of the Vedantic term maya, the Greek name Maia, ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... crowns on 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
... predict—" I began, when my villainous pun was arrested in mid-utterance by the voice of Captain Tolliver, suddenly becoming the culminating peak ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... mean a design, and a subject so low. For mean's her design, and her subject as mean, The first but a rebus, the last but a dean. A dean's but a parson: and what is a rebus? A thing never known to the Muses or Phoebus. The corruption of verse; for, when all is done, It is but a paraphrase made on a pun. But a genius like hers no subject can stifle, It shows and discovers itself through a trifle. By reading this trifle, I quickly began To find her a great wit, but the dean a small man. Rich ladies will furnish their garrets with stuff, Which others for mantuas would ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... 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, where the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... received it with dejection and tears." The writer from whose letter I have copied these words adds, O tremor et suspiria non cadunt in fortem et constantem. The same writer incloses a punning distich: the name of our lord chief-justice was in his day very provocative of the pun, both in Latin and English; Cicero, indeed, had pre-occupied the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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, and CUFF (remember that name) being the name of the landlord, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shilling: he nor hears with pain New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale; But with his friends, when nightly mists arise To Juniper's Magpie or Town Hall[4] repairs. Meanwhile he smokes and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous or conumdrum quaint; But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And hunger sure attendant upon want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff (Wretched repast!) my meagre corps sustain: Then solitary walk or doze at home ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... I were not ashamed of making a pun, or, as we say in academic circles, being guilty of antanaclasis, I would say ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... whose roots are often underground in the subconsciousness. Many a man talks sense when he thinks he is talking nonsense; touches on a conflict of ideas as if it were only a contradiction of language, or really makes a parallel when he means only to make a pun. Some of the Punch jokes of the best period are examples of this; and that quoted above is a very strong example of it. The cabman meant what he said; but he said a great deal more than he meant. His utterance contained fine philosophical doctrines and distinctions of which he was ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... disposition. He was a great laugher, but never at any recent merriment. It took a long while for him to understand a joke. Indeed, if it were subtle or elaborate, he never understood it. But give the doctor, when in good health, a plain pun or repartee, and let him have a day or two to think over it, and he would come in with uproarious merriment that well-nigh would choke him to death, if the paroxysm happened to take him with his mouth ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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 they know ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... though the generality of mankind have agreed in supposing it possessed nothing remarkable but dulness and obstinacy. Lucian exercised his genius on a fly; and Erasmus has dignified Folly in his Encomium Moriae, which, for the sake of the pun, he inscribed to Sir Thomas More. The subject of Michael Psellus is a Gnat; Antonius Majoragius took for his theme Clay; Julius Scaliger wrote concerning a Goose; Janus Dousa on a Shadow; and Heinsius (horresco referens) eulogized a Louse. This last animal ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... 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 ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... 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 of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... hearty task at length was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the spiteful squib and pun The girls ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... madly jealous if 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 wait for me. He likes ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... 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, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... have occurred in vol. i. 238, where I have noted the punning "Sabr" patience or aloes. I quote Torrens: the Templar, however, utterly abolishes the pun ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... your words; it was the truth they conveyed, pun-gently as it was expressed. But you shall not drive me off upon that, and so escape the expression of my deep gratitude, my—' he was on the verge now; he would not speak in the haste of his hot passion; he would weigh each word. He would; and his will was triumphant. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 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 ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... negress and sometimes supported by canting figures in full. This Mark, with variations, was also employed by Philippe and Guillaume le Noir, the work of the three men covering a period of nearly 100 years. The device of Gilles or Gillet Couteau, Paris, 1492, is apparently a double pun, first on his Christian name, the transition from which to oeillet being easy and explaining the presence of a pink in flower, and secondly on his surname by the three open knives, in one of which the end of the blade is broken. It was almost ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... 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 was not sorry to have my ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... contributor to the "London Magazine") has much that is characteristic of the writer. In it he plays—as he does in other letters to distant friends—on the way in which "this confusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two presents" renders writing difficult; in it he airs his fondness for a pun and enlarges upon the fugacity of that form of fun, its inherent incapacity for travel; and in it, too, he gives some indication—we have several such indications in his letters—of his fondness for hoaxing his friends with invented news ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... his answer long enough to decide against the aimless pun of asking, "What Bushwick?" and merely asked, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ten pound, if 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 they make so ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... or 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
... 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... prepares to pour out again,—but you, the stranger, do make the best of your way out, with no preparation at all; whereupon you infallibly put your foot (and half your leg) into a river, really that, of rainwater—that's a Bora (and that comment of yours, a justifiable pun!) Such things you get in Italy, but better, better, the best of all things you do not (I do not) get those. And I shall see you on Wednesday, please remember, and bring you the rest of the poem—that you should like it, gratifies me more than I will try to say, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... rhyme or pun, bad, good, or indifferent, was let slip, however much taking it up might interrupt ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... 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 ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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
... 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 ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... big 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 Okeham? ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... 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 I ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... millionaire, you mean. [Chuckling]. Haw! ha ha! really very nearly a pun, that. [He sits down ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... resented the touches of Spanish local colour in the play, the mixture of pleasantries and familiar speeches with the tragic dialogue, and of heroism and savagery in the character of Hernani, and they made all manner of fun of the species of pun—de ta suite, j'en suis—which terminated the first act. "Certain lines were captured and recaptured, like disputed redoubts, by each army with equal obstinacy. On one day the romantics would carry a passage, which the enemy would retake the next day, and from which it became ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... cigar-case, closed it up again and said: "Yes—I think, after that, I SHALL be going, and I am sorry I fail to see the fun of your jokes." Gowing said he didn't mind a joke when it wasn't rude, but a pun on a name, to his thinking, was certainly a little wanting in good taste. Cummings followed it up by saying, if it had been said by anyone else but myself, he shouldn't have entered the house again. ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the evidence did not appear strong enough. Lord Gower said:—"Mr. Attorney, you seem to be very lukewarm for your party." He replied:—"My Lord, I never was lukewarm for my party, nor ever was but of one party!"' Walpole's Letters, ii. 140. Mr. Croker assumes that Johnson here 'attempted a pun, and wrote the name (as pronounced) Go'er. Johnson was very little likely to pun, for 'he had a great contempt for that species of wit.' Post, April ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... not only mean the art of keeping something indirectly in the memory by the use of some direct pun or witticism; it should, rather, be applied to a systematic theory of memory, and explain its several attributes by reference both to its real nature, and to the relation in which these attributes ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... are! Ah, you mean that infernal compound which they cover ships' bottoms with? What an atrocious pun!" The man looked puzzled. "Bullen, R.A., great at composition; it sounds well," continued Lightmark gaily, just touching in the brown sail ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... For the purposes of his pun on "night-mare," Hood adroitly utilizes the story of the famous Lady Hester Stanhope, whom Kinglake, in his Eothen, first made familiar to so many of us. He there speaks of the "quiet women in Somersetshire," and their surprise when they learned that "the intrepid ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the stick to roam to jostle the pun shameless to drive away it is not her fault gradually or little by little he was talking loudly, with his glass ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... thank the creature for leaving such a unique specimen, at least," laughed Mr. Garth, completely mollified; (if you will not accuse us of an insane desire to make a pun). "Come, fairy changeling, and let's ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... Shakespeare is at first unsure of his personage; he fumbles a little; yet the vivacity, the roaring life, is certainly a quality of the original Falstaff, for it attends him as constantly as his shadow; the pun, too, is his, and the phrase "sweet wag" is probably taken from his mouth, for he repeats it again, "sweet wag," and again "mad wag." The shamelessness, too, and the lechery are marks of him, and the love of witty word-warfare, and, above all, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... 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 ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of Granada as the centre of a system of strongholds and rock-built castles suggested to him his 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
... said, 'when I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin' to go weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten shilling a pun'. Us had it when us were sick—which wasna' often. We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... have been aware that, beyond this note, there was any evidence to produce, that such a meeting as has now been described, was ever actually held. But he observes, "There is nothing improbable in the meeting, and Cromwell's pun quite accords with other anecdotes of his conversation."(5) The part which Mr. Binning is reported to have acted on this occasion, was no less characteristical of him. He was a very able disputant. But when giving utterance to his feelings, or expressing his sentiments, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... against Jupiter Pluvius, who seemed to take especial pleasure in demonstrating their failure, nineteen centuries after the contemptuous erasure of him from the calendar, to escape his power. It was reserved for the Philadelphia Commission to bring his reign (not the slightest intention of a pun) to a close. The most delicate silk or gem, and the most delicate wearer of the same, were enabled to pass under roof from San Francisco into the Main Building in Fairmount Park, and with a trifling break of twenty steps at the wharf might do so from the dock at Bremen, Havre or Liverpool. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... more conspicuous because he was a Jew. I was reading the other day a book of essays by one of our leading young latitudinarian divines, in which he was most anxious to prove that Our Lord had all the graces of a well-bred young man about town, including a pretty wit. He actually claimed that the pun on Peter's name was an example of Our Lord's urbane and genial humour! It gives away the latitudinarian position completely. They're really ashamed of Christianity. They want to bring it into line with modern thought. They hope by throwing overboard the Incarnation, the Resurrection of the Body, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... my reader has survived this pun, I will now go on to state that it is a common thing in Corea to begin a dinner with sweets, and that another curious custom is for all present to drink out of the same bowl of wine passed round and of course re-filled ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... recant," said he, bluntly; and everybody saw what had operated his conversion. That is a pun. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... scarcely more than a prolonged pun on "Coat o' Clay." Mrs. Balfour's telling redeems it from the usual dulness of folk-tales with a ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... point 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 ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... rather its contents have. You know what the Bible says, 'Biteth liek a serpent and stingeth like an adder?' Ah, here it is. But gloomy forebodings seize me: it is suspiciously light. Paradoxically, its lightness induces gravity in me. But that pun is entirely too fine-drawn ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... a fortune by the sale of mourning snuff-boxes, whereon the portrait of the young Queen, in a black frame of shagreen, gave rise to the pun: "Consolation in chagrin." All the fashions, and every article of dress, received names expressing the spirit of the moment. Symbols of abundance were everywhere represented, and the head-dresses of the ladies were surrounded by ears of wheat. Poets sang of the new monarch; all hearts, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... "If I were pun-mad, like some folks, I could do something quite smart there. But there, you poor, wet dear! You sha'n't be outdone in your specialty, no you sha'n't! Get off your things quick, dear—we're all bursting to talk about the ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... he ridiculed in a pun, Luther published a short and pungent reply in Latin and German. He was particularly indignant that this occasion should have been seized to tax his sermon with false doctrine, since the wish he there expressed did not contain, as even his enemies ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... 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
... 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 ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... intended as a pun upon the names of two news-venders or corranto-coiners of the day. Nathaniel Butter, the publisher of "The certain Newes of this present Week," lived at the Pyde-Bull, St. Austin's-gate, and was the proprietor of several ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... A.M. thermometer 68 deg.. The mosquitoes were most tormenting; as was well expressed by one of the men outside my tent, who remarked to his companion, "That the more you punishes 'em, the more they brings you to the scratch:" a tolerable pun for one of "the fancy," of which class we had rather too many in the party. The horses, although tethered and close spancelled, could not be secured, even thus. Some had broken away and strayed during the night. It was ascertained ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks, And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve,[8] familiar toad. Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, In pun, or politics, or tales, or lies. Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. His wit all see-saw, between that and this, Now high, now low, now make up, now miss, And he himself one vile antithesis. Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... followed this last pun of the voyage reechoed along the shore, and it was not until we reached Howe's hotel, a sort of Bath York House stuck in the middle of Golden Square, London, that the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... whose Fanny's a pseudo Don Juan, With the wickedness out that gave salt to the true one, He's a wit, though, I hear, of the very first order, And once made a pun on the words soft Recorder; More than this, he's a very great poet, I'm told, And has had his works published in crimson and gold, With something they call "Illustrations," to wit, Like those with which Chapman obscured ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... trying," 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 tentative attempts toward ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... through my mental sieve, its precepts filtering unheeded, could I but glean a suggestion of a pun or a bon mot. The solemnest anthems of the choir were but an accompaniment to my thoughts as I conceived new changes to ring upon the ancient comicalities concerning the jealousies of ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... 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
... whispered by heavenly inspiration, and which soothed and hallowed his mourning for the guide and protector of his youth. He loved to dwell on her very name, Esclairmonde—'light of the world.' The taste of the day hung many a pun and conceit upon names, and to Malcolm this—which had, in fact, been culled out of romance—seemed meetly to express the pure radiance of consolation and encouragement that seemed to him to shine from her, and brighten the life ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the 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 kind ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... close the 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 ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... 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. O you! whom vanity's light bark conveys On fame's mad voyage by the wind of praise, With what a shifting gale your course you ply, For ever sunk too low, or borne too high! Who pants for glory finds but short repose, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... ascribe the saying to Caesar, rather than to Cicero, in order to render to some extent this fearful pun. ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... would not "man-evolved Godhead" be 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 ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... 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, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... pun and squeezed by the girl to get to his seat. "I'll take it now, pop," he said. "Go get your ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... short period, we were informed by the Lark that we had not lost a treat—for Jemima had been singing, "Memory, be thou ever true!"—whilst Lark (perpetrating a dreary pun) said, he every moment wished the music-stool would prove a fall setto, and precipitate the lady to the ground; for it was a sad pity to hear ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... and he stands among us a being whom every one loves and admires, without any very distinguishing trait of learning, wit, or superior qualification, to command the respect he excites. If any one tells a good story or makes a laughable pun, Tom retails it for a week, and all the school have the advantage of hearing and enjoying it. Any proposition for a boat party, cricketing, or a toodle into Windsor, or along the banks ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... could rest, ere the lips could close The sound of a listener's laughter rose. It was not the scream of a merry boy When harlequin waves his wand of joy; Nor the shout from a serious curate, won By a bending bishop's annual pun; Nor the roar of a Yorkshire clown;—oh, no! It was a gentle laugh, and low; Half uttered, perhaps, perhaps, and stifled half, A good old-gentlemanly laugh; Such as my uncle Peter's are, When he tells you his tales of Dr. Parr. The rider looked to the left and the right, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... twenty-five dollars a 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, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... 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 ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... cook, following Sam's lead, and working up a shudder. "Not for fifty pun in gold. I don't ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... took French leave, the b—y sans culotte" returned the captain, putting himself in a better humor with his own pun. "But did you see ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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! ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... deference to those better able to form an opinion upon the subject;) but it is impossible to hear the unharmonious crash which proceeds from the orchestra of the opera, without immediately recollecting the celebrated pun of Rosseau: "Pour l'Academie de musique, certainement il fait le plus du bruit du monde." On the other hand, it is amongst the peasantry alone that you now find the ancient music of France. Those airs which are so deeply associated with all the glory and gallantry of the old monarchy; those songs ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... re-appointed to the same ship. Brahe afterwards made a proper submission for the fault he had committed, at his own court. His conduct reminds us of Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an ambassador—that he is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. A pun upon the term lieger—ambassador.—B.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... economy of his realm; he restored the caste-divisions, and carried fire and sword into the lands of his enemies. He transported many captives to Egypt; fortified his eastern frontier; and built, in the Gulf of Suez, a fleet of large and small ships, in order to traffic with Pun and the "Holy Land,"[EN46] and to open communication with the "Incense-country" and with the wealthy ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... 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
... This pun had been repeated, and had reached Louis XIV, so that the chevalier presently heard, directly enough this time, that the king desired him to travel for some years. He knew the danger of neglecting—such intimations, and since he thought the country after all preferable ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 'ave a 'eavy 'eart 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 few ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... possibly guess the riddle of the bamboo. It represents a sort of pun in symbolism. There are two Chinese characters both pronounced setsu—one signifying the node or joint of the bamboo, and the other virtue, fidelity, constancy. Therefore is the bamboo used as a felicitous sign. The name 'Setsu,' be it observed, is often given to Japanese ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... another long speech from Gurgurk, with the nobles behind him murmuring antiphonal agreement—standard procedure, for which there was a standard pun, geek chorus—and a speech of response from Sid Harrington. Standing stiffly through the whole rigamarole, von Schlichten waited for it to end, ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... artistic judgments. They were not all of the same opinion: but they were all ruffled by the freedom of his language. Old Krause, the alto, a good fellow and a good musician, who sincerely loved Christophe, tried to turn the conversation: he coughed, then looked out for an opportunity of making a pun. But Christophe did not hear him: he went on: and ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Mixed wi' thistles, mebbe?' An' then he used a bit of 'is master's or'nary language, which as ye knows, Passon, is chice—partic'ler chice. 'Evil communications c'rupts good manners' even in a valet wot 'as no more to do than wash an' comb a man like a 'oss, an' pocket fifty pun a year for keepin' of 'is haristocratic master clean. Lor'!—what a wurrld it ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... here to contain a pun, the consonantic outline of "Tasht""basin" being the same as of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... sport!" laughed the old gentleman. "Didn't mean it for a pun, I hope? Never could endure puns! So you came down yesterday, young gentleman, did you? And ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... to keep up a sickly intercourse, not intending a pun. They were too often called in to consult together, to maintain an open war. While the heads of their respective families occasionally met, therefore, at the bed-side of their patients, the families themselves had no direct communications. It is true, that Mrs. Woolston and Mrs. Yardley were occasionally ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... Great Light; spirit of light," from Michabo, "beyond a doubt!" In my poor opinion, whatever claims Michabo may have as an unique creator of earth and heaven—"God is Light,"—he owes his mythical aspect as a Hare to something other than an unconscious pun. In any case, according to Dr. Brinton, Michabo, regarded as a creator, is equivalent to Strachey's Ahone. This amount of corroboration, valeat quantum, I may claim, from the Potomac Indians, for the belief in Ahone on the James River. Dr. Brinton ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... growin' us somp'in t'eat. Us didn' have no horse an' plow; Yankees done carried off all de horses an' mules an' burnt up ever'dthing lak plows. Us dug up de groun' wide a grubbin' hoe an' raised pun-kins an' plenty o' chickens ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... 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 ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... as one more task ticked off from their memorandum book, and count up the list of summits visible from the Goernergrat without being penetrated with any keen sense of sublimity. And there are mountaineers who are capable of making a pun on the top of Mont Blanc—and capable of nothing more. Still I venture to deny that even punning is incompatible with poetry, or that those who make the pun can have no deeper feeling in their bosoms which they are ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... 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 applied ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... also affirmed that "women cannot make a pun," which, if true, would be greatly to their honor. But, alas! their puns are almost as frequent and quite as execrable as are ever perpetrated. It was Queen Elizabeth who said: "Though ye be burly, my Lord Burleigh, ye make less stir than my ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... by the account of Suffenus, as well as some other pieces, and come to that very short one in which he complains of the mortgage which is on his villa. It is a wretched pun on the word "opponere," and was scarcely worth translating;—take ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... degree of emptiness was natural; first because the snow-storm was even dangerously deep, and secondly because it was Sunday. And at the very word Sunday he bit his lip; the word was henceforth for hire like some indecent pun. Under the white fog of snow high up in the heaven the whole atmosphere of the city was turned to a very queer kind of green twilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed and sullen sunset behind the dark dome ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... game in large numbers at one time. This was especially the case with the buffalo, which were the food and raiment of the people. One of these contrivances was called pis'kun, deep-kettle; or, since the termination of the word seems to indicate the last syllable of the word ah'-pun, blood, it is more likely deep-blood-kettle. This was a large corral, or enclosure, built out from the foot of a perpendicular cliff or bluff, and formed of natural banks, rocks, and logs or brush,—anything in fact to make a ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... [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. When ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... 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 offices in ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... 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
... "Bore." Never 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 gun, ran short ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... was 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 ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... pompous funerals. All who discharged the customary offices on such occasions rose against the innovation. But the stout patrician found imitators in all classes; and, though such ceremonies were derisively called ox-burials,[Footnote: A pun upon the name of Ochsenstein.— Trans.] they came into fashion, to the advantage of many of the more poorly provided families; while funeral parades were less and less in vogue. I bring forward this circumstance, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... male Forey allied the System and the cake in a miserable pun. Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the table silent, as if he were going to speak; but he said nothing, and the young gentleman vanished from the conversation in a blush, extinguished ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as your ladyship,' says he, 'is mistress of all sorts of spells.' But this was Dr. Swift's pun, and we all ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... deduction from the fact that they were quite utterly gone. A thorough scrutiny of my surroundings, which I conducted with the aid of my late sleeping companion, merely served to confirm this belief, the search being bootless. I have no intention of making a pun here. Puns are to me vulgar, and hence odious. I mean bootless in the proper ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... 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
... true of 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 ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... the 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, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Shakespeare sole, A hundred hurts a day I do forgive ('Tis little, but, enchantment! 'tis for thee): Small curious quibble; Juliet's prurient pun In the poor, pale face of Romeo's fancied death; Cold rant of Richard; Henry's fustian roar Which frights away that sleep he invocates; Wronged Valentine's unnatural haste to yield; Too-silly shifts of maids that mask as men In faint disguises that could ne'er disguise ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... in his chair, held his sides and uproariously expressed his approbation. Then came the distribution of prizes, during which the Grand Old Boy made some pun or quaint remark on each of the children's names, as he presented the books: "Miss Minnie Morrow: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day; James Glen: be a real genuine Glen all through life, not a valet or flunkey; William ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... bully, and he had a bully's reputation to maintain; but he never fought when the odds were against him; and he had a congressman's skill in backing out before the water got too hot. On the whole, he rather enjoyed the pun; and he had the condescension to laugh heartily, though ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... called "the Protestants of the East," had been spreading the story of the life and love of Christ. And here, in this year of grace 635, in the city of Chang-an, and in all the region about the Yellow River, the good priest Thomas the Nestorian, whom the Chinese called O-lo-pun—the nearest approach they could give to his strange Syriac name—had his Christian mission-house, and was zealously bringing to the knowledge of a great and enlightened people the still greater and more helpful ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... do like I told him for?"—thus ran the 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 with a slamp—a sound like the fall of a pasty Titan on loose boards. The ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... eighty horse-power each, and with a whole series of vertical and horizontal rudders. She was popularly called the Mayfly—a name which, both in and out of Parliament, suggested to bright wits an ill-omened pun. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... unknown origin, probably coined in burlesque imitation of scholastic Latin, as "hocus-pocus" or "panjandrum"), originally a term meaning whim, fancy or ridiculous idea; later applied to a pun or play upon words, and thus, in its usual sense, to a particular form of riddle in which the answer depends on a pun. In a transferred sense the word is also used of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... been called away to Margate on affairs connected with the residents there. Finding myself labouring under a cold, I avoided wine, and while my companion discussed his Chateau Margaut, I kept up a languid conversation with him, enlivened occasionally by the snap of a walnut-shell or indifferent pun, with now and then an enquiry or remark respecting the street passengers. Amongst those, the milk-vender and lady at the moment happened to pass along—"By the by," I said, "there is one peculiarity about that Pair I cannot help remarking. I observe, that wherever, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... with an amiable grin, I saw a great hamper in the charrette, and from a spicy whiff borne to my nostrils by a passing breeze I knew he was conveying our dinner to the picnic-grounds, and I was duly thankful that neither Fatima nor I was to be hampered ('tis a poor pun, and my father hath ever taught me 'tis the lowest form of wit) with clumsy packages dangling from ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... as to elude our keenest penetration;—at the same time give me leave to offer my conjecture, which you may have by a little transmutation of a vulgar adage, in such manner as to obtain at one and the same time (so to speak) not only a strong reason for my alleged inhumanity, but also an apparent pun, and a seeming paradox; all which you have for the small and easy charge of saying, The belly ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... and two lozenges counterchanged, with: "i, semper melius eris,"—a motto which, together with the two distaffs taken as supporters, proves the modesty of the burgher families in the days when the Orders held their allotted places in the State; and the naivete of our ancient customs by the pun on "eris," which word, combined with the "i" at the beginning and the final "s" in "melius," forms the name (Serisy) of the estate from which the ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... to him for a good time. "Dollars were made to spend. I am young, and every man must sow his wild oats and then settle down. I want to be a 'hail fellow well met' with every one." So he is ever ready to drink a social glass, to give a pun and to be a "masher on the girls." With this determination uppermost in his life purpose he starts out to be a good-timer. Perhaps some mother expects to hear great things of her boy, some father's hopes are ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... us to believe that the old usurer may not, after all, have had that grim reception in the other world which Shakespeare's squib foreboded for him. By the by, till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pronunciation, I never understood that the point of those ill-natured lines was a pun. "'Oho!' quoth the Devil, ''t is my John a' Combe'"—that ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not forget to walk like a woman in the State of Louisiana,"—as near as the pun can be translated. The company laughed. Jean Thompson looked at his wife, whose applause he prized, and she answered by an asseverative toss of the head, leaning back and contriving, with some effort, to get her arms folded. Her laugh ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... the University Church, "a particular part," says the Westminster Review, "is appropriated to the heads of the houses, and is called Golgotha therefrom, a name which the appearance of its occupants renders peculiarly fitting, independent of the pun."—Am. ed., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... 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 that very fact to the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various |
