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The Learning Kingdom's Cool Word of the Day for October 6, 1999
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pun [n. PUN]
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A pun is a witty play on words. Sometimes it is a story or sentence
including a word that has two meanings, but most often a word is
substituted for one that sounds similar, giving a funny or ironic
twist to a sentence.
In the 17th and 18th centuries in England, it was fashionable to
create short one-syllable words from longer ones. One such word was
mob, which was short for mobile. Another may have been pun, from
pundigrion, a fancy name for a witty play on words. Pundigrion was
probably inherited from Italian puntiglio (nice point; quibble),
which also gave us punctilious [adj. pungk-TIL-ee-us] (meticulous;
precisely proper).
More recently, these new words have emerged from pun:
punster: one who writes or utters puns
punnology: the study of wordplay involving puns
punnigram: a short witty poem or statement including a pun
We resisted the temptation to include a pun. But if you must have
them, here are more than you may ever want:
http://www.punpunpun.com/
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