Puns and other forms of word play have been used by many famous writers, such as Alexander Pope, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Bloch, Lewis Carroll, John Donne, and William Shakespeare, who is estimated to have used over 3, 000 puns in his plays.

Puns may also be found in syntax, where morphological constructions have derived from what may have originally been humorous word play, slang, or otherwise idiosyncratic word usage.

" Puns have been regarded as a sign of superior education and Baum uses the Woggle-Bug's puns repeatedly to highlight his conceitedness regarding his own education.

Puns and plays on words have gone by the wayside.

Puns are used to create humor and sometimes require a large vocabulary to understand.

Puns often are used in the titles of comedic parodies.

Puns were found in ancient Egypt, where they were heavily used in development of myths and interpretation of dreams.

Puns are occasionally used to connect ideas, such as " the Magnificrab, Indeed " with Bach's Magnificat in D ; " SHRDLU, Toy of Man's Designing " with Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring ; and " Typographical Number Theory ", or " TNT ", which inevitably reacts explosively when it attempts to make statements about itself.

Very frequently found today, and often giving rise to complex explanations ( see below, Puns, Jokes and Corruptions ) The use of pairs of words in the name of an inn or tavern was rare before the mid-17th century, but by 1708 had become frequent enough for a pamphlet to complain of ' the variety and contradictory language of the signs ', citing absurdities such as ' Bull and Mouth ', ' Whale and Cow ', and ' Shovel and Boot '.

Puns are a common source of humour in jokes and comedy shows.

Puns, phonetic mix-ups such as spoonerisms, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, and telling character names are common examples of word play.

Puns, phonetic mix-ups such as spoonerisms, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, and telling character names – such as The Importance of Being Earnest ( Earnest being both a name and an adjective ) – are common examples of word play.

Puns on the " wet dirt " meaning of " mud " are endemic, as with, for example, the names of the ROM ( Rivers of MUD ), MUCK, MUSH, and CoffeeMUD codebases and the MUD Muddy Waters.

Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, given that their usage and meaning are entirely local to a particular language and its culture.

Puns also bear similarities with paraprosdokian, syllepsis and eggcorns.

One week in 18, it's a " Puns and Anagrams " puzzle, a relic of a 1940s attempt to introduce cryptic puzzles to the US.

Puns, a Shakespearean staple, are especially well represented in the scene where Richard tries to persuade Queen Elizabeth to woo her daughter on his behalf.

Puns that do not work in High German indicate that the book was written in Low German first and translated into High German in order to find a larger audience, although more recent research throws this into question.

* Herzogenrath, Bernd Puns, Orphans, and Artists: Moon Palace.

Puns of Steel ( 2000 – 2001 ) became the first Club show to record its score on a CD.

“ Visual Puns and Verbal Puns: Descriptive Analogy or False Analogy ?” In: Diana Popa and Salvatore Attardo ( Eds.

Other regular segments included the Small Talk Challenge, Two Types of People, Marketing Makeover and Pisslame Puns of the Week.

The Call of the Phoneme: Puns and the Foundations of Letters.

* http :// www. shakespeare-navigators. com / hamlet / Pap. html Hamlet's Puns and Paradoxes

She seemed to have come such a long distance -- too far for her destination which had wilfully been swallowed up in the greedy gloom of the trees.

The American people have indeed come a long way in the brief interval between 1930 and 1961.

When I mentioned that for my first long voyage I did not even have the money for the return fare, but had trusted to luck that I would earn a sufficient amount, the young people looked at me doubtingly.

And so I would only touch upon it now ( much as I have long wanted to write a book about it ).

I have more than once sat cross-legged in the grass through a long summer morning and watched without touching while a poppy bud higher than my head slowly but visibly pushed off its cap, unfolded, and shook out like a banner in the sun its flaming vermilion petals.

A Yale historian, writing a few years ago in The Yale Review, said: `` We in New England have long since segregated our children ''.

If only for this modest masterpiece of military history, Blenheim is likely to be read and reread long after newer interpretations have perhaps altered our picture of the Marlborough wars.

The wear and tear of life have taught me that very few friends of mutual friends long to see foreign strangers, but I planned on being the soul of tact, of giving them plenty of outs was there the tiniest implication that their cups were already running over without us.

Had he been able to escape this long siege of invalidism, I'm convinced, Papa would have left a sizable estate.

Considering then the optimism which has permeated science fiction for so long, what is really remarkable is that during the last twelve years many science-fiction writers have turned about and attacked their own cherished vision of the future, have attacked the Childhood's End kind of faith that science and technology will inevitably better the human condition.

Pohl and Kornbluth's ad men have long since thrown out appeals to reason and developed techniques of advertising which tie in with `` every basic trauma and neurosis in American life '', which work on the libido of consumers, which are linked to the `` great prime motivations of the human spirit ''.

American taxpayers have been impressed by the surpluses for a long, long time.

The Federal program eventually should have a favorable impact on Missouri's depressed areas, and in the long run that will benefit St. Louis as well.

Gov. John M. Dalton, himself a lawyer and a man of long service in government, spoke with rich background and experience when he said in an address here that lawyers ought to quit sitting in the Missouri General Assembly, or quit accepting fees from individuals and corporations who have controversies with or axes to grind with the government and who are retained, not because of their legal talents, but because of their government influence.

a person will never have spiritual poise and inner peace as long as the heart holds a grudge.

Evidently the war drum beating and hysteria so painstakingly being stirred up in the West have been planned long in advance.

Top scientists have warned that an area hit by an atomic missile of massive power would be engulfed in a suffocating fire storm which would persist for a long time.

Some of the stumps are as much as three feet long, but most of them have been flattened by the pressure of the overlying sediments.

And particularly in the musical field, adaptations have long been the rule, from Die Fledermaus and The Merry Widow to Oklahoma! and My Fair Lady.

`` I think I've fixed the pump so we won't have to worry about it for a long time '', he said.

What matter the others so long as I have my place in history ''.

I would not want to be one of those writers who begin each morning by exclaiming, `` O Gogol, O Chekhov, O Thackeray and Dickens, what would you have made of a bomb shelter ornamented with four plaster-of-Paris ducks, a birdbath, and three composition gnomes with long beards and red mobcaps ''??

On September 16, Sam Rayburn will have served as Speaker twice as long as any predecessor and I am proud to join with others in marking this date, and in expressing my esteem for that notable American, Sam Rayburn.