Force of nature Puns

Gravy.

and immediately crashes it, killing several people.

At the trial, the man is found guilty of multiple murders and sentenced to death.

Before he faces his sentence, he’s offered a last meal, and asks for a single banana, which is given to him.

The next day, he’s led to the electric chair. They strap him in, pull the switch, and... nothing happens.

There’s never been a failure before. But because you cannot punish a person twice for the same crime, the court is forced to let him go free.

Within a week’s time, naturally, the man, who is obsessed with trains, goes and steals another one.

He doesn’t care that he can’t drive it or that he failed catastrophically before; he is obsessed with trains and his only desire is to operate one. As before, he crashes it, and kills several people.

Again, he stands trial, and again, he is sentenced to death, showing no remorse, only delight that he got to operate the train.

His last meal request is a single banana. When he goes to the chair, the executioner pulls the switch, but nothing happens. He goes free again.

The train-obsessed maniac, once more on the loose, wastes no time in hijacking a train and crashing it.

His trial is speedy, because this has already happened twice, and he is sentenced to death.

They ask him what he’d like for his last meal. “A single banana,” he says.

“Oh, no you don’t, you son of a bitch. We’re on to you, now. We know all about your little banana trick, and you’re not escaping this time!”

The guards refuse his request, and instead serve him a standard last meal of steak, potatoes, and berry cobbler.

The next morning they strap him into the electric chair, pull the switch, and... nothing happens.

“Did you give him the banana?” demands the head guard.

“No, sir! He asked for the banana but we didn’t give it to him, we swear!” says one of the guards.

Turns out the banana had nothing to do with anything. He was just a really bad conductor.

Note: Quality Very Varying (I see what I did there) and sometimes subject to specialist knowledge. So I apologise in advance. Shame me with your better puns.

While I was languishing in the Language Centre, doing some semantics antics and considering how all the other linguistics students despised and derided me, I was accosted by a stout man with large glasses who made me a preposition. It was that I should collect terrible puns, to do with linguistics, in order to ingratiate myself yet further with the other linguistics students (including even the phonetics fanatics).

I'm struggling to think of a pun to do with grammaticality that both makes sense and "Is grandma tickly?" correct. I'm also stuck on 'morphologician'. (I'm not actually sure that's a particularly logical word for the subject, though I guess that's more for, er, more for a logician to worry about.)

The problem I have with writing about phonological variation is that one is constantly forced to choose between being fun or logical - very Asian!I always get in trouble with electricians, they think I'm calling them a 'dialectician' whereas in fact I'm just saying "Die, electrician."

I like pscycholinguistics – the only department of linguistics where it’s acceptable to wear a cycle helmet. My Australian accent is terrible but I like to think my Sath Efrican one is predicate. My favourite accent is Received Pronunciation, because it is the accent chiefly used by invisible Japanese people who are ordered online. When the first recipient of an invisible Japanese person got the parcel, they wrote a complaint saying "Received but can't see Asian" and the name stuck.

Why did the speakers whose native languages weren't English, but whose only shared language was English, but they weren't very good at it and kept on having to stop to think about it, stop talking to one another? They came to an agreement. (Get it? If not, write your answer on a pastecard and paste it to the below address.)

What did the 'a' say to the 'the'? "You definitely are ticklish, 'the'!"

Why was the small man eaten by the large bear, which was proportionately bigger than him? It had, er, relative claws.

I think the reason there are so many speakers of Russian is because they all partake in an activity called "copulae shun". (Ok, ok, I know, that was Pushkin it.)

I know a man called Hillary who can, might, should, did, must, shall and will ride an ox. We call him "Ox Hillary".

I always think the verb 'to be' in the senten