Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Puns & Wordplay (The Groan Is the Applause)
A pun is two meanings sharing one word, and your groan is the receipt for catching both. This is comedy for people who love the language enough to bend it. All classics of the form.
The pun has the longest paper trail of any joke form. It appears in Sumerian tablets, in Shakespeare by the hundred, and in every newspaper headline desk since headlines existed. It has also been the most criticised form for just as long, which tells you something: no other joke gets a physical reaction as reliable as the groan.
The mechanism is one word holding two meanings while the sentence quietly commits to the wrong one. Good puns are built backwards from the double meaning, then given the shortest possible road to reach it, because every extra word gives the listener time to spot the join. Puns work best in writing, in headlines, in captions and in conversation with people who like language — and they work brilliantly with children, who are still discovering that words can misbehave.
I used to be addicted to the hokey pokey — but I turned myself around.
Santa's helpers are subordinate Clauses.
A backward poet writes inverse.
I'm on a seafood diet. I see food, and I eat it.
When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
I tried to catch fog yesterday. Mist.
Broken pencils are pointless — but I keep them anyway. No point in throwing them out.
I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me. (Yes, this one moonlights on the One-Liners page. Puns work two jobs.)
I used to work in a shoe recycling plant. It was sole destroying.
The baker retired because he kneaded the rest.
I wrote a song about a tortilla. It's more of a wrap.
The electrician refused to argue. He didn't want anything to escalate into a current affair.
I know a man who collects fridge magnets. He has a very attractive kitchen.
The road worker went home early. The job was tarmac-ing him tired.
I told my plants a joke and they didn't laugh. Tough crowd, very rooted in their ways.
The tailor was fired for being too pushy. He kept pressing the issue.
I bought a boat on credit. Now I'm in over my head and under the water line.
The clockmaker had a lot of time on his hands and hour after hour of it.
I applied to work at the bakery but they said I kneaded experience.
The astronomer quit after being told to focus. He said he'd rather look at the big picture.
The locksmith's business closed and reopened, which is basically his whole skill set.
The escalator repairman never worries. If it breaks, he calls it stairs and takes the credit.
I invested in a company that makes revolving doors. I'm still going round on whether it was wise.
How to tell these
Do not signal the pun. No raised eyebrow, no pause before the key word, no change in tone. The word should arrive dressed as an ordinary word and only reveal itself afterwards.
Take the groan and move on immediately. Trying to convert a groan into a laugh by explaining the wordplay is the only way to genuinely lose the room, whereas a second pun landing straight after a groan usually doubles it.
Puns reward volume and forgiveness. Have several ready, accept that a third of them will die, and never defend a casualty. Written down, they land harder still, which is why captions, cards and signs are the pun's natural habitat and conversation is merely the day job.
A last piece of housekeeping: keep a note of the ones that work. Puns are the most disposable jokes in comedy and the easiest to forget, and a short list on your phone turns a lucky accident into reliable material.
More joke types