Apt Puns

It's a lie, they contain no cheese.

My mom teased my dad by calling him gay. This is how my Dad retaliated.

Dad: your ex boyfriend was hot .

Mom: which one?

Dad: Me

After she saw how it works, she thought it was aptly named.

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

My roommate texts me: I can't get our ducking apt door open (obvious typo)

My response: You just have to push real hard to quack it open

I was listening to this song with my brother, and I said, "it's very apt that they are playing this song where they are."

This was always one of my dad's favorites to tell us.

A long time ago, there was a beehive in the middle of a forest. Every day, as worker bees do, they would go out into their fields, gather pollen from the flowers, and bring it back to make honey.

The bees had a problem, though, because every so often an intruder would come around, such as a bear who wanted the honey, or kids who thought it'd be fun to throw rocks at the hive. Finally, the bees got tired of it.

Being the intelligent bees that they are, they built an alarm system for the hive. They built it such that one bee pulls a lever, which triggers the alarm that the bees will hear from the fields, and then the bees can come back to protect their home.

There was one bee who was exclusively assigned that job, and he was aptly named the "Lever Bee." His job was to watch for potential adversaries, and pull the lever to raise the alarm.

Now clearly, the safety of the hive depends on this one Lever Bee. So it stands to reason that he has to be constantly ready and on the alert so that he can do his job.

And that, friends, is why people say, "I'm as ready as a Lever Bee."