"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the writer of the above-mentioned leaderette had he referred to the ninth of ELIA's Popular Fallacies, and been thereby reminded how "a pun is a pistol let off at the ear; and not a feather to tickle the intellect." The Baron is prepared to admit that the lesson to be learned from this delightful Essay of CHARLES LAMB's is, that a pun ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... will be one in the mouth.—Yes, boys," he continued, drawing himself up, "I do mean to hit hard, and let the Principal and the masters see that we are not going to have favouritism here. Indian prince, indeed! Yah! who's he? Why, I could sell him for a ten-pun note, stock and lock and bag and baggage, to Madame Tussaud's. That's about all he's fit for. Dressed up to imitate an English gentleman! Look at him! His clothes don't fit, even if they are made by a ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... "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
... pun. "Very well, sir, but while speaking of aces, it's always best to have 'em up. And the higher up the better. Larkin is a great pilot when he has plenty of altitude—right where a lot of the others fall down. Take him with you and ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... subject and wove along with faintly upturning, half-humorous intonations for sentence ends—as though defying interruption—and intervals of shadowy laughter. Dick had told her that Anthony's man was named Bounds—she thought that was wonderful! Dick had made some sad pun about Bounds doing patchwork, but if there was one thing worse than a pun, she said, it was a person who, as the inevitable come-back to a pun, gave the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and made his fortune thereby. He manufactured a mourning snuff-box, of black shagreen, whose lid was ornamented with a portrait of the queen. He called his boxes "La consolation, dans le chagrin,"[Footnote: "Mbmoires de Madame de Campan" vol. i., p. 91.] and his portrait and pun became so popular, that in less than a week he had sold a hundred thousand of these boxes.[Footnote: This word "chagrin," signifies not only grief, but also that preparation of leather, which, in English, is called "shagreen." Hence ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... 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' ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that most succulent edible, the crab, when the poet Crabbe is mentioned in their presence—and who can resist an obvious pun—are not really far astray. There can be little doubt but that a remote ancestor of George Crabbe took his name from the "shellfish," as we all persist, in spite of the naturalist, in calling it; and the poet did not ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... 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
... seen and known of Puritan affairs, being in somewhat more lively strain. But lively was an adjective to which Mistress Anne had a rooted objection. Her contemporaries indulged in an occasional solemn pun, but the only one in her writings is found in the grim turn on Laud's name, in the "Dialogue" just quoted, in which is also a sombre jest on ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... listened coldly, and the conversation flagged. In despair she blurted out, "General, what woman could you love the most?" "My own," was the stinging reply. ("Quelle femme?" "La mienne.") Woman and wife being the same word in French, Napoleon's retort was a disdainful pun. "Very well; but which would esteem you the highest?" she persisted. "The best housekeeper." "Yes, I understand; but which one would be for you the foremost among women?" "She who should bear the most children, madame," was the icy rejoinder, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... practicality, she went on: "But we'll have that righted in a jiffy. I'll turn the Elsinore's after-quarters upside down, though I know there are none in father's room or mine. And though this is my first voyage with Mr. Pike I know he's too hard-bitten" (here I laughed at her involuntary pun) "an old sailor not to know that his room is clean. Yours" (I was perturbed for fear she was going to say that I had brought them on board) "have most probably drifted in from for'ard. They ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... striven to have abolished in the interests of fashionable progress, until they learned that in many of the best English houses it is a custom as sacredly part of the ghostly British Constitution as the bathless bath of the basin, as the jokeless joke of the pun, as the entertainment that entertains not, as the ruler that rules not and the freedom that frees not. When he appeared in the dining-room door, his mother and Del were already seated. His mother, her white face a shade whiter, said: "I expect you'd better sit—there." She neither ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... aware that we have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents acquainted with ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... grown, went by the name of "Pax grounds"; the words "rivet" and "vine," were rendered "ribet" and "bine." "March," a boundary, became "Marsh," so that Moreton-on-the-March became, most unjustly, "Moreton-in-the-Marsh." "Do out," was "dout"; "pound," was "pun"; "starved," starred. The Saxon plural is still in use: "housen" for houses, "flen" for fleas; and I noticed, with pleasure, that a school inspector did not correct the children for using the ancient form. Gilbert White, who died ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... testified to a keen recollection of his Viennese experiences and the double dealing (no pun intended) of the Austrian shopkeeper just at the present epoch in the national finance system ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... dead roses, a glance at a pun, A toss of old powder, a glint of the sun, They meet in the volume ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... bun. Can cen cin con cun. Dan den din don. dun. Fan fen fin fon fun. Guan guen guin guon gun. Han hen hin hon hun. Jan jen jin jon jun. Lan len lin lon lun. Man me min mon mun. Nan nen nin non. nun. Pan pen pin pon pun. Qua quen quin quon qun. Ran ren rin ron run. San sen sin son su. Tan ten tin ton tun. Uan uen. uin uon. uun. Xan xen xin xon xun. Yan yen yin yon yun. Zan zen ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... mean alone,—all alone. Don't you ever feel as if you should like to have been a pillar-saint in the days when faith was as strong as lye (spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dish-water? (Jerry is looking over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to send, and a disgrace to the University—but never mind.) I often feel as if I should like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,—yes, and have it soaped from top to bottom. Wouldn't it be fun to look down at ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... preasents, and proceeded on with a Chief to his Village 2 miles in the Same Plain, where we were treated kindly in their way and continued with them all night Those two Villages consist of about 30 double lodges, but fiew men a number of women & children; They call themselves Cho pun-nish or Pierced Noses; " their dialect appears verry different from the Tushapaws altho origneally the Same people" They are darker than the Tushapaws Their dress Similar, with more beads white & blue principally, brass & Copper in different ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... pun like that you ought to be forced to drink a bottle or two of Tosh Elixer!" retorted Bud. "How ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... with all her heart. He never teased her as Jem and Shirley did. He never called her "Spider." His pet name for her was "Rilla-my-Rilla"—a little pun on her real name, Marilla. She had been named after Aunt Marilla of Green Gables, but Aunt Marilla had died before Rilla was old enough to know her very well, and Rilla detested the name as being horribly old-fashioned and prim. Why couldn't they have called her by her first ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 shores ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... 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 ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... moreover had borne the reputation of being a drunkard and a domestic tyrant ... "and a cultured man into the bargain!".... (Here Kupfer laughed in a self-satisfied manner, by way of hinting at the pun he had made);[60]—that he had left at his death, in the first place, a widow of the merchant class, a thoroughly stupid female, straight out of one of Ostrovsky's comedies;[61] and in the second place, a daughter much older than Clara and bearing ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... smile and joke When with misfortune crowned; Who'll pun beneath a pauper's yoke, And as he breaks his daily toke, ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... people say, and he would never have done that on purpose. I assured him that I knew he had said it accidentally, but it stopped us talking about Ward, because, when you hate puns, it is most discomforting to make one suddenly. I made a pun once—I can still remember it, because if I had performed this feat intentionally I should have deserved all I got. What I did get was a dig in the ribs from Collier and the remark, "You are a wag," and then I had ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... 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 when empty. The dinner is served on tiny tables rising only ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... that time. "Yes," said Jerrold, drawing his finger round the edge of his wineglass, "that's the range of his intellect,—only it had never any thing half so good in it." I quote this merely as one of the average bons-mots which made the small change of his ordinary conversation. He would pun, too, in talk, which he scarcely ever did in writing. Thus he extemporized as an epitaph for his friend Charles Knight, "GOOD NIGHT!"—When Mrs. Glover complained that her hair was turning gray,—from using essence of lavender (as she said),—he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... 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 wi' ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... 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 of it's ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Mr. Stelling's; and for the first time in his life he had a painful sense that he was all wrong somehow. When Mr. Stelling said, as the roast-beef was being uncovered, "Now, Tulliver! which would you rather decline, roast-beef or the Latin for it?" Tom, to whom in his coolest moments a pun would have been a hard nut, was thrown into a state of embarrassed alarm that made everything dim to him except the feeling that he would rather not have anything to do with Latin; of course he answered, "Roast-beef," whereupon there followed much laughter and ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... word of 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 any puzzling question ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... punning Puck! Thou hast been to Philadelphia, where all the streets rhyme, and every corner is a pun upon the next. May ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... trifling too long on this asinine subject. I have already passed the Pons Asinorum, and will desist, remembering the old pedantic pun of Jem ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... to the understanding of Chesterton. With him, profound gravity and exuberant fooling were always intermingled and some of his deepest thoughts are conveyed by a pun. He always claimed to be intensely serious while hating to be solemn and it was a mixture apt to be misunderstood. If gravity and humour are the two lobes of the average man's brain, the average man does not bring them into play simultaneously ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... indeed. He would, provided the opportunity remained with him. But it would not, for I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life. If I had been full-grown, of course he would have been right; but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... good, though rather a severe pun, which was made by a student in one of our theological seminaries (and he was not one of the brightest of the class, either), when he asked, "Why is Professor—— the greatest revivalist of the age?" and on all "giving ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... beast, As e'er in tug or tow was trac'd. The fourth's a Highland Donald hastie, A d—n'd red wud Kilburnie blastie! Forbye a cowt o' cowt's the wale, As ever ran afore a tail. If he be spar'd to be a beast, He'll draw me fifteen pun' at least.— Wheel carriages I ha'e but few, Three carts, an' twa are feckly new; Ae auld wheelbarrow, mair for token, Ae leg an' baith the trams are broken; I made a poker o' the spin'le, An' my ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... is all in tillage; and I had some conversation with the man who cultivated it. He told me that the wall had been built with the money of sin, and not the money of piety (pap ke paisa se, na pun ke paisa se bana), that the man who built it must have laid out his money with a worldly, and not a religious mind (niyat); that on such occasions men generally assembled Brahmans and other deserving people, and fed and clothed them, and thereby consecrated ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... I feel too nervous," I replied, not laughing at his joke, as I might have done another time, although the pun was a regular old stager, passing the yet unopened letter across the table. "You read it, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... listening to the dialogue, looked aghast, and evinced a strong inclination to ask a question, but was checked by a look from his wife. Mr. Wisbottle laughed, and said Tomkins had made a pun; and Tomkins laughed too, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... is a grizzly," explained Harry, "a grizzly bear you know. Dad says he's the biggest he's ever seen and he seems to bear—excuse the pun, please—he seems to bear a charmed life. All the boys on the ranch are crazy to get a shot at him, but ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... in relation to the globe on which she dwelt and requested them to consult together as to what might be the cause and probable cure of her infirmity. The king laid stress upon the word, but failed to discover his own pun. The queen laughed; but Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck heard with humility and retired in silence. Their consultation consisted chiefly in propounding and supporting, for the thousandth time, each his favorite theories. For the condition of the princess afforded delightful scope for the discussion ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • 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 humorist ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... be so or not—we merely relate what we have heard; but we incline to the two Bluchers, because of the eight-and-six. The only additional expense likely to add any emolument to the tanner's interest (we mean no pun) is the immense extent of sixpenny straps generally worn. These are described by a friend of ours as belonging to the great class of coaxers; and their exertions in bringing (as a nautical man would say) the trowsers to bear at all, is worthy of notice. There is a legend extant ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... 'Dear me,' said a lady, 'how this creature teases me!' I took it up and put it into my breast-pocket. Mr Wells said, 'That is a pretty nosegay.'—'Yes,' said I, 'it is a dog-rose.' Wilkie's attention, sitting opposite, was called to his friend's pun, but all in vain. He could not be persuaded to see anything in it. I recollect trying once to explain to him, with the same want of success, Hogarth's joke in putting the sign of the woman without a head ('The Good Woman') under the window from ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... has made (without a pun) some noise in history. One of its ancient lords, Enguerrand de Marigny, was the inventor of the famous gibbet of Montfaucon, and in the poetic justice which should ever govern such cases he came to be hung on his own gallows. He was convicted of manifold extortions, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... 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
... position at home he owed to his ability to curry favor with the king by shouldering the odium of unpopular acts. [Sidenote: May, 1521] When the Duke of Buckingham was executed for the crime of standing next in succession to the throne, Wolsey was blamed; many people thought, as it was put in a pun attributed to Charles V, that "it was a pity so noble a buck should have been slain by such a hound." Wolsey lost the support of the nobles by the pride that delighted to humble them, and of the commons by ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... recall, we defined as the funny observation of a pure monologue—in lay-conversation it means the laugh line of a joke; and "gag" we defined as a joke or a pun. For the sake of clearness let us confine "point" to a funny observation in a monologue, and "gag" to a joke in ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... 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 Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... 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 saddle ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... 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 could drink ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... pleases. Can a stick be 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 the verb ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... stories. When later, during a residence of nearly four years among the people, my eyes were opened to behold the wondrous fertility of invention, the wealth of literary, historic and classic allusion, of pun, myth and riddle, of heroic, wonder, and legendary lore in Japanese art, I at once set myself to find the source of the ideas expressed in bronze and porcelain, on lacquered cabinets, fans, and even crape paper napkins and tidies. ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... in triumphant faith they were walking the golden streets, with palms in their hands 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 king made ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Van wants grace, who never wanted wit! The stage how loosely does 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. 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, A breath revives him, or a breath ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... 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 said that upon another occasion, after the return of Mr. Slidell from a foreign ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... "Wings of Love" by Simmias, a Rhodian, who lived before 300 B.C. The verses are graduated so as to form a pair of wings. "The first altar," written by Dosiadas of Rhodes, is the earliest instance of a Greek acrostic, or of any one which formed words. An acrostic is a play upon spelling, as a pun is upon sound; and in both cases the complication is too slight for real humour. They are rather to be considered as ingenious works of fancy. The first specimens are those in the Psalms—twelve of which have twenty-two verses beginning ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... with Dr. Lee, the master of Baliol College? And are you not delighted with his gaiety of manners and youthful vivacity now that he is eighty-six years old? I never heard a more perfect or excellent pun than his, when some one told him how, in a late dispute among the Privy Counsellors, the Lord Chancellor (Thurlow) struck the table with such violence that he split it. 'No, no,' replied the Master, drily, 'I can hardly persuade myself that he split the table, though I believe he ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... motions he reached up and 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 weakness ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... restrictions: In accordance with Statutes of 1883, Chapter 268, any officer, agent, or servant of any corporation or association, who confers, or authorizes [15] to be conferred, any diploma or degree, shall be pun- ished by a fine not less than five hundred dollars and not more ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... semblance; affinity, approximation, parallelism; agreement &c 23; analogy, analogicalness^; correspondence, homoiousia^, parity. connaturalness^, connaturality^; brotherhood, family likeness. alliteration, rhyme, pun. repetition &c 104; sameness &c (identity) 13; uniformity &c 16; isogamy^. analogue; the like; match, pendant, fellow companion, pair, mate, twin, double, counterpart, brother, sister; one's second self, alter ego, chip of the old block, par nobile fratrum [Lat.], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... execrable pun. Steele leaned against the counter, his gray glance studying the man ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... stuck, and couldn't get any farther, and Allison had to be smart and pun on my name. She made ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Grunthi-jee,' said the Subadar-Major, 'you and I grow too old to care for the Kahar-ki-nautch—the Bearer's dance.' He named one of the sauciest of the old-time nautches, and smiled at his own pun. Then he turned to his nephew. 'When I was a lad and came back to my village on leave, I waited the convenient hour, and, the elders giving permission, I spoke of what ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the potency of new influences which had begun with "Asrael" was given fresh fuel by the production of "Diana von Solange." Why an opera which had lain "so lange" (to make an obvious German pun) in the limbo of forgotten things, which, indeed, had never enjoyed a popularity of any kind, though it was thirty or forty years old, should have been resurrected for production in New York was a question ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... even accepting your analogical pun, what does it amount to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... over at his chum, and ready for his pun, even under such circumstances, "my head is feeling a 'trifle heavy,' but I'm game to stand up ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... be more destructive of the higher forms of conversation than a pun? What right has any one to explode a petard in the midst of sweet sociality, and blow every thing like sequence and sentiment sky-high? And therefore, since you, as translator of the Pasha's Letters, have taken pains to publish his observations on many ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... political economist, and Necker, the banker, as ministers; but both broke down under the opposition of the nobility. Then Calonne volunteered, witty and reckless, and convoked the notables, or not-ables, as Lafayette called them in one of his American letters, borrowing a bad pun from Thomas Paine. Calonne could do nothing with the notables, who obstinately refused to submit to taxation. Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, took his place. This was in April, 1787, a month before Paine's arrival in France. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... to escape detection from the faculty, though not very artfully concealed. But the terminations of the stanzas rendered the thing transparent to the audience during the delivery, as was quite manifest from the general movement of their risibles. But Wheelwright was himself as ignorant of the pun as the faculty were, until both were enlightened the following week, when the real author caused it to be published in the Cistula Literaria—an interesting journal, edited by a committee of the ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... years, is no doubt the Amitayus-sutra, Amitayus being another name for Amitabha (Fu-shwo-wou-liang-sheu-king, p. 6). See, also, Catalogue, pp. 99, 102. Dr. Edkins also, in his Notices of Buddhism in China, speaks of a translation of "the Sutra of boundless age," by Fa-t'ian-pun, a native of Magadha, who was assisted in his translation by a native of China familiar with Sanskrit, about 1000 ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... pour out their fluid, and the whole body is bathed and cooled. 6. Milton said that he did not educate his daughters in the languages, because one tongue was enough for a woman. [Footnote: In tongue, as here used, we have a Pun—a witty expression in which a word agreeing in sound with another word, but differing in meaning from it, is used in place of that other.] 7. Glaciers, flowing down mountain gorges, obey the law of rivers; the upper surface flows faster than the lower, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... and fulfilment, was called [Greek] in some parts of Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with its memory of Saturn's golden days, was named [Greek]. The sickle of Cronus, the sickle of harvest-time, works in well with this explanation, and we have a kind of pun in Homer which points in the direction of Preller's ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... like the furrow cut by a ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatest importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert; and when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with his two luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors of a pun; the gentlemen whose business it is to write the Market Reports would ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... replies; "punning, like beer and other vices, is the peculiar prerogative of men, I suppose. But you need not be afraid. I read PUNCHINELLO sometimes, and it is a terrible warning to people who are tempted to pun. I could give you frightful instances of the appalling depth to which the men who make puns ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... think well of you: you are the bravest, the most modest, and, perhaps, the handsomest man in our corps; but you have not got a single rupee. You ask me for Julia, and you do not possess even an anna!"—(Here the old rogue grinned, as if he had made a capital pun).—"No, no," said he, waxing good-natured; "Gagy, my boy, it is nonsense! Julia, love, retire with your mamma; this silly young gentleman will remain and smoke a pipe ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... name translated means 'Diana's Grove.' Then the next one higher than it, but just beyond it, is called 'Mercy'—in all probability a corruption or familiarisation of the word Mercia, with a Roman pun included. We learn from early manuscripts that the place was called Vilula Misericordiae. It was originally a nunnery, founded by Queen Bertha, but done away with by King Penda, the reactionary to Paganism ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... tempting jar of preserves, "they wa'n't nobody but what was 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 was a-washin' up dishes, I ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... 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. ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... 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. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... made him turn his wit, whenever he could, in the direction of a defence of happier and humaner views. In the long great roll that includes Homer and Shakespeare, he was the last great man who really employed the pun. His puns were not all good (nor were Shakespeare's), but the best of them were a strong and fresh form of art. The pun is said to be a thing of two meanings; but with Hood there were three meanings, for there was also the abstract truth that would have been there with ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... floral family, they call me Daisy. A dreadful American man once told me that my aunt was a Bluebell and that I was a Harebell—with two l's and an e—because my hair is so thick. I warn you, so that you may avoid making such a bad pun." ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... cardinal at Alcala de Henares, and 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
... hearty good-natured 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: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the use of breaking your head to save him?" said Mrs. Crowl, with an unconscious pun. "He ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... 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 stand ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... always encourages one to proceed, even though decorously, with the use of the pun. Such screams of mirth as (we doubt not) greeted one of Ben Jonson's simpletons when he spoke of Roger Bacon as Rasher Bacon (we can hear them laughing, can't you?) ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... turned on Bon-Mots, be quoted, from one of the Ana, an exquisite instance of flattery in a maid of honour in France, who being asked by the Queen what o'clock it was, answered, 'What your Majesty pleases.' He admitted that Mr. Burke's classical pun upon Mr. Wilkes's being carried on the ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... "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 ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... names, indeed, which in the social circle will in spite of all due gravity awaken a harmless smile, and Shenstone solemnly thanked God that his name was not liable to a pun. There are some names which excite horror, such as Mr. Stabback; others contempt, as Mr. Twopenny; and others of vulgar or absurd signification, subject too often to the insolence of domestic witlings, which occasions irritation even in the minds ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... holding council with himself; "evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is—without meaning any pun. I can read this like ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Groups. It was a family joke to call the chipmunk's burrow by that name, and though the puppies did not understand the pun they relished ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... A roar of pun-protesting groans filled the cavern, and as several of the boys arose in attitudes of vengeance, the punster made a dive for the exit and disappeared beyond the blanket portiere. None of the protestors followed. They did not feel like engaging in any vigorous sport following the ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... 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 ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but they're rich, these Rollses! I could make a pun about their name and their money, but I won't, because it would be cheap, and nothing is cheap at Sea Gull Manor. You can get a faint idea what the house and the view are like from the hand-painted sketch at the top of this paper on the left ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... 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 attention taken up by the river Avon, along the banks ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... exactly what a psychical phenomenon is. Let us banish the will-o'-the-wisps, replace them by a precise instance, and return to the visual perception we took as an example a little while back: without intending a pun, "revenons a nos moutons." These sheep which I see in the plain are as material, as real, as the cerebral movement which accompanies my perception. How, then, is it possible that this cerebral movement, a primary material ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... 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 pale ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... visitors, still less of the subject of conversation when he came in, and he talked his full share till called upon; yet he ran his jokes and his verses upon us all in the easiest manner, saying something characteristic of every body, or avoiding it with a pun; and he introduced so agreeably a piece of village scandal upon which the party had been rallying Campbell, that the poet, though not unjealous of his dignity, was, perhaps, the most pleased of us all. Theodore afterward sat down to the pianoforte, and enlarging upon this subject, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... person as Love, and does the writer mean merely to pun upon the word? Cupid certainly played the fool in the court of Henry VIII. as much ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various
... proved by the loud guffaws and low chuckles that echoed through the beautiful forest whose branches shaded us from the August sun. His reputation as a wit of the first water was firmly established, and every pun and jest thereafter succeeding was crowned by the halo ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... our hearty task at length was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the spiteful squib and pun The ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... has described Lamb's manner or merits so well as Hazlitt: "He always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like tears; and he probes ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... else." The old man turned his head slightly, and replied, "What you see is the badger scratching his neck against a tree; the ticks are evidently tickling him." And he chuckled as he recognised his unintentional pun. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... words, Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary, two or three times, and associate with them the idea of oblivion ('tis Hartley's method with obstinate memories), or say, Independent, Independent, have I not already got an independence? That was a clever way of the old Puritans, pun-divinity. My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would be to bury such parts in heathen countries, among nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar-people! Some say they are Cannibals; and then, conceive a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Bouille, said that he had made her rich, and that it was to him she owed her great wealth; and further, that one day having taken her to a pretty country seat which belonged to him, she praised its beauty, saying "c'etait un beau lieu"; he replied by a pun on a man's name, saying that he knew another Baulieu who had enabled him to make a fortune of five hundred thousand crowns. He also said to Jadelon, sieur de la Barbesange, when posting with him from Paris, that the Countess de Saint-Geran had been delivered of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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
... 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 ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... 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 ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... A pun on the two senses, (1) journey, (2) labour, the latter of which is now distinguished by ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... and then blushed very red, as it occurred to him he had made an unintentional pun. But we looked quite grave, and did not give any sign of having seen it, and that put him on his ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... and, of course, was well abused; for success is apt to bring with it envy and satire. Mr. William Hogarth, who objected strongly to competitors, sought to jest down the advancing Scotchman with a feeble pun about a Ram's eye! Hogarth was very much less clever when he had a pen in his hand than when he was wielding a brush ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... tired of talking of our faults. Let me turn to the more pleasing task of discussing those of the English. In the first place, and as a minor matter of form, I think that English humour suffers from the tolerance afforded to the pun. For some reason English people find puns funny. We don't. Here and there, no doubt, a pun may be made that for some exceptional reason becomes a matter of genuine wit. But the great mass of the English puns that disfigure the Press every ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock |
