Forest School Puns

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

Years ago I used to use a LexisNexis database of companies that would give corporate information like name, address, and general business description. While most of them were pretty bland, there were a bunch of them with some really cheesy puns, and over a few years I built quite a collection.

Today I share with you "NEXIS IS RIDICULOUS.txt":

• Bucyrus International caters to those who mine their own business.
• It would be logical for Mr. Spock to boldly go to Vulcan International for rubber products. He might even live long and prosper -- in comfortable shoes.
• What do manufacturer Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) and 1970s band Grand Funk Railroad have in common? They both want you to do the locomotion!
• Peter Piper can pick more than a peck of peppers or pickles from B&G Foods.
• Toray Plastics America could sing "foam, foam on the range, where the polyester and polypropylene materials are made" all day.
• Break out the Tums, because things are awfully gassy over at Air Liquide America.
• If a tree falls in a Weyerhaeuser forest, someone is there to hear it -- and he has a chainsaw.
• Although not a pushover, you can walk all over Wilsonart International.
• Here's a HEICO haiku: HEICO companies/ Providing for jet engines/ In flight or on land.
• American Italian Pasta Company (AIPC) uses its noodle in many different ways.
• The golf industry doesn't mind when Aldila gives it the shaft.
• Rat-a-tat-tat and a ringa-ding-ding. What's that? Answer: The sounds emanating from Pearl, one of the world's foremost makers of drums and other percussion and musical instruments.
• Saint-Gobain Ceramics & Plastics deals powders and crystal, but there's no need to call the cops.
• Pamida Stores Operating Company offers more small-town values than a bandwagon of Republicans on the campaign trail.
• Like a tight end, offshore drilling contractor Transocean dreams of going deep but doesn't mind eating a little mud.
• Rittal me this, Batman!
• Utility Trailer Manufacturing is spreading its own brand of reefer madness.
• Who is the Fresh Prince of Sullair?
• If GrafTech International were a bard, it could wax poetic in an ode to the electrode.
• When it comes to adhesives and vibration control products, LORD knows.
• You might say that Deere & Company enjoys its customers going to seed.
• Pfizer pfabricates pfarmaceuticals pfor quite a pfew inpfirmities.
• Stripping is OK at Spraylat.
• Don't think Seton is