Culture · 6 pages · 12 min
How a pun spends a word twice
A pun makes one uttered form pay out two meanings the hearer is meant to keep.
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From the opening
A pun spends a single stretch of sound or spelling on two meanings at once, or on two meanings in quick succession. The joke or the point is the double booking, and the word does not stop being one shape on the page or in the ear. The opening covers how one form pays twice, why accident is not a pun, and what paraphrase can test.
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Inside
- How one form pays twice
- Why accident is not a pun
- What paraphrase can test
- Where serious poems pun too
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- A single form carrying two intended senses
- Paronomasia as the classical name for punning