The English language -- littered as it is with homophones, homographs and metonyms-- was made for puns:
The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
These much-beloved figures of speech, which deliberately confuse similar words or phrases for rhetorical (and usually humorous) effect, are recorded as early as the days of the pharaohs (where they were used to interpret dreams), and they have for centuries been a mainstay of some of the world's greatest literature:
Shakespeare alone is estimated to have used over 3000 puns in his various plays:
There's another: why may not that be the skull of a
lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets,
his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he
suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the
sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of
his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be
in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes,
his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers,
his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and
the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine
pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him
no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than
the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The
very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in
this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?
Hamlet: Scene V, Act I: 103-112
Milton also was a great punster, as were many lesser authors:
Anyone building a private library around this topic, though, should keep in mind that not all puns are verbal....
As might be expected, the Internet is awash with sites that record puns of all types, a great many of which have been penned by that most famous of all authors, Anonymous....
There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
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