The High & Mighty Puns

Not quite as tragic, but it manifested into something which has haunted me at my job for years.

When I was a little kid learning about the world around me, my dad was naturally the font of all knowledge for me, He would answer all of little snippersmith's questions with his own unique insights and anecdotes teaching me of my surroundings with varying degrees of accuracy.

One day In a picture book, I encountered a photo of one of natures most bizarre creatures, the mighty duck billed platypus. Filled with curiosity of this bizarre creature and an Inability to read a young snippersmith asked his father what this creature was called, To which his father replied,

That's a Quackopotamous.....

As is a highly likely situation in day to day life the Platypus (or indeed the Quackopotamous), did not come into conversation for another 17 years, Until of course the Platypus came into conversation around the lunch table at a now grown up snippersmith's full time place of work.

I have not been allowed to forget I thought the Platypus was called a Quackopotamous, Indeed I am reminded on a daily basis by my colleagues, by my nickname Quackopotamous .

Thanks Dad.

EDIT 1: Holy Cow this took off! Gold! thank you so much.

The bartender responds, "Well, ain't you heard cowboy, we gonna string up Brown Paper Rattler mighty high, even the angels are gonna hear his neck break!"

Hopalong asks, "Why they call him Brown Paper Rattler?"

The bartender chuckles, "Why, old Rattler wears a brown paper Stetson, a brown paper waistcoat and even right down to brown paper socks."

Puzzled, Hopalong then asks, "So why you hanging him?"

...and the bartender replies, "For rustling."

I have written this book to sweep away all misunderstandings about the crafty art of punnery and to convince you that the pun is well worth celebrating.... After all, the pun is mightier than the sword, and these days you are much more likely to run into a pun than into a sword. [A pun is a witticism involving the playful use of a word in different senses, or of words which differ in meaning but sound alike.]

Scoffing at puns seems to be a conditioned reflex, and through the centuries a steady barrage of libel and slander has been aimed at the practice of punning. Nearly three hundred years ago John Dennis sneered, “A pun is the lowest form of wit,” a charge that has been butted and rebutted by a mighty line of pundits and punheads.

Henry Erskine, for example, has protested that if a pun is the lowest form of wit, “It is, therefore, the foundation of all wit.” Oscar Levant has added a tag line: “A pun is the lowest form of humor—when you don’t think of it first.” John Crosbie and Bob Davies have responded to Dennis with hot, cross puns: “...If someone complains that punning is the lowest form of humor you can tell them that poetry is verse.”

Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century self-appointed custodian of the English language, once thundered, “To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the national till without remorse... ”

Joseph Addison pronounced that the seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and tho’ they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius, that which is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art.

Far from being invertebrate, the inveterate punster is a brave entertainer. He or she loves to create a three-ring circus of words: words clowning, words teetering on tightropes, words swinging from tent tops, words thrusting their head into the mouths of lions. Punnery can be highly entertaining, but it is always a risky business. The humor can fall on its face, it can lose its balance and plunge into the sawdust, or it can be decapitated by the snapping shut of jaws. While circus performers often receive laughter or applause for their efforts, punsters often draw an obligatory groan for theirs. But the fact that most people groan at, rather than laugh at, puns doesn’t mean that the punnery isn’t fu