Cultivated Puns

Arrrrtichokes!

"Grow a pear."

It's sage advice.

Dear Lord as week seek to produce puns worthy of your praise, lettuce relish this opportunity. We ask that you would cause humor to sprout in the hearts of those who think us nuts. Continue to cultivate in us passion, fruit which beets back sadness and joy which leeks into others. Though some may say we are corny we know you will give us sage wisdom. Give us the confidence to know we are kale’in it as we bring choy to the world and live apply ever after.

She was, however, terrible at cultivating evil pluots.

Him: [Playing with various toys] "Help me! Two sea monsters!!"

Me: "Help you to see monsters? They're right there."

Him: [With the eyerollest eyerolls that ever eyerolled] "No, Dad, this is not for puns."

All of them.

It went down the road, and turned into a field.

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

Girlfriend reading article on phone.

I comment "what is this guy holding in the photo?"

She says "mushrooms"

I said "wow". They were huge mushrooms.

She says "Yeah this guy has found a way to cultivate natural pesticides from fungi and has a patent too"

My response "Wow. He seems like a really fun guy!"