Word: puns
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...happened in the last ten years, but remembers everything before that"; glib Oscar Levant, composer, super-pianist, gag-stacked Broad-wayfarer-are acknowledged by listeners as U. S.'s most knowing know-it-alls. Master of Ceremonies Clifton Fadiman is famous for beating the experts to the pun while he puts the pick of 75,000 questions submitted each week by listeners...
When the British wanted to honor the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, famed Victorian philanthropist, they did it with a pun. His memorial fountain in London's bustling Piccadilly Circus is topped by an aluminum winged archer shooting an arrow downward ("burying a shaft"). Popularly, the statue is known as the god of love, Eros. Tradition has it that, while Eros stands in Piccadilly, no Londoner can be arrested for kissing a girl. Last week, if any Londoner felt like kissing in public, he had to watch his step; for Eros was removed-for the duration of World...
TIME'S reporter on People (TIME, July 3, p. 28) should go back to his Latin class. The point of the Oxford University orator's pun, in presenting Justice Frankfurter for the D.C.L., was that instead of quoting the poet correctly-Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas-he said reorum, changing the poet's "things" into the more appropriate "legal arguments...
...former President, who has lectured on democracy at University of Chicago since last February (honorary degrees from Princeton, Yale); Poet Archibald MacLeish, newly appointed Librarian of Congress (Doctor of Letters, Yale); U. S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter (Doctor of Civil Law, Oxford), who was saluted with a Latin pun: Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas (Happy indeed is he who can understand legal arguments...
Last week the theory that a pun can be the highest form of propaganda was again tried out on the U. S. people. A little-known but potent organization called the Council of State Governments adopted and broadcast Balkanization. Intent: to convey the idea that trade fences erected by & between the 48 hitherto United States are becoming as dangerous to U. S. economy as Balkan feuds have long been to the life of Europe...