Word: puns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...course this fellow, speaking only Latin, didn't realize what an atrocious pun he was committing. But if he had been intelligent enough to know English, he would simply have uttered, "Caesar sees her; seize her, Caesar...
...case "s". It is no funnier to one who is familiar with the period than the fact that men then were knee-breeches and not trousers. But Mr. Thompson quotes paragraph after paragraph to show how ludicrous this custom was, and it affords him an opportunity for a bad pun or two. There are other puns. The movement of the fleet during the evacuation of Boston by the British in 1776 reminded one witness, it is recorded, of a "moving forest." To which Mr. Thompson adds: "a Birnam Wood moving on towards Dunsinano, with reverse English...
...Virginia Faulkner's Friends and Romans.* A "comico-romantic novel," it breaks nobody's bones or butterflies, lets no threatening skeletons loose on a frightened world, hurls no manifesto, literary or political. Pertinacious sniffers might accuse Author Faulkner of abetting James Joyce in attempting to restore the pun as an honest figure of speech; but most readers will take these and similar skylarkings with a hop, skip and a jump. As lively and tuneful as a good musicomedy, Friends and Romans is no more profound, but it is cheaper and better entertainment...
...desk, at the beginning of the work day, Fridays, I take snatches at it, between rewriting reporters, wire copy and whatnot. But this snatch, the penultimate paragraph, col. 1, p. 13, April 23, in which you state that his audience didn't laugh at Roosevelt's pun, indicates a fall from your customary accurate grace...
President's Pun...