If I Could Choose Puns

Just to be clear.

So, we're driving up a tree-lined street where people often have wedding/family photos taken. It's lined with live oaks and is pretty beautiful. That prompted this conversation.

12 y/o daughter: Why do people sometimes get their wedding photos taken on train tracks? That doesn't make sense.

Me: Because they choo-choose to? [with a debt to Ralphie Wiggam]

6 y/o daughter (Loud groan): Papi, that's a terrible joke.

Me: So you think you could engineer a better one if I train you?

12 y/o: Dad why do you always make these awful jokes?

Me: Because I've got loco motives!

At that point I started laughing so hard I couldn't come up with anymore.

There once was a princess named Emily, but the royal family called her Em for short. One day the king posed a riddle in order to choose a suitor for his eldest daughter, Elizabeth. The riddle was as follows:

Elizabeth has two apples, and Emily has one apple. Emily gives Elizabeth her apple as a wedding gift. How might you calculate the total amount of apples Elizabeth has presently?

Many days passed and no one could figure out the answer. Of course, on the first day a man came and answered, “Sire, to calculate the amount of apples Elizabeth has, you must add Emily’s apple.” He was promptly executed.

After this, the kingdom was stumped. Nobody knew how to calculate Elizabeth’s apples if the answer was not to simply to add Emily’s apple, and none dared to try and answer unless they were absolutely sure of it.

One night, a young man, determined to find the answer, climbed up the palace walls to watch the royal family as they ate.

“Father,” said Emily, “have you made the riddle too hard? No one has been able to guess it yet.”

“No worries Em,” responded the king, I have confidence that the time will come soon.”

The young man descended the wall, having learned the secret to the riddle.

The next day, dressed In his finest clothes, the young man approached the king with the answer to the riddle.

“What is your answer, young man?” declared the king.

The young man replied, “In order to calculate Elizabeth’s apples, you must ADD EM’S APPLE.”

The king answered “lol get it?”

So I got home from college yesterday and was greeted at the bus terminal by my dad. Dad: "Since it's your first night home we should go out for dinner. You choose where we go." Me: "I could go for some Chinese if it isn't too far away." Dad: "I think it'll be worth the wok" He then proceeds to laugh hysterically while I shake my head

Oh boy do I have a joke for you kids! Its called the cheerio joke.

So there is this land called cheerio land and in cheerio land there are 7 classes of cheerio, 0-5 and the frosted cheerios. Now there is this level 0 cheerio. Hes homeless, living out on the street, probaly an alchoholic. But he falls in love with a frosted cheerio princess. So one day he sneaks into the royal gala and goes up to the princess and asks her "will you marry me?" Now she says "I like your style, youre a good looking guy, a bit scruffy but I like you. Tell you what I will marry you if you can become a frosted cheerio" So our guy goes back with a determination and gets a job and starts to pay off his debts. Now by having a job and his debts paid he becomes a level 1 cheerio. So he works, and he works, and he works, and he WORKS and he finally becomes a level 2 cheerio. Now he goes back to the princess and askes her again, "will you marry me?" she says "no honey you really do have to become a frosted cheerio first." So he goes back and he works and works, hes a fryboy at McGrubers or something, I dont care. So he works and he works and he gets promoted at the restraunt and is making more money. And he works and he works and he works and by having that income raise he finally becomes a level 3 cheerio. He feels sucessful for the first time in his life but he is starting to fall back on his old ways. One day he goes to the casino and he loses and he loses and he loses and he gambled all his money away and he gets fired to boot because gambling is against company policy. So he is back down to a level 1 cheerio. He gets a job on a production line at a nearby factory and determines himself not to fall back ever again. So he works and he works and he works and he works and he WORKS, level 2, level 3, and he is doing great again. He is promoted to Floor manager of the factory and he is doing great and becomes a level 4 cheerio. But then one day a rival company sabotages their operation by putting poison in their toothpaste or whatever the hell they were making. They have to pay out damages and PR and the like and they declare bankruptcy. He is knocked back down to level 2 for the lack in income. But he is hired almost straight away by a branch of a huge conglomerate because they recognized how hard of a worker he is. So he works, level 3, works, level 4, and he works and works and WORKS. So he is promoted t

I went on a few dates with a girl who works at Macy's. We chat a lot and then she sprung a weird question on me. She said, "my boss thinks you're cute and wants your number. Should I give it to her?" I told her I'd prefer to keep dating her and not her boss, but if she just wanted to be friends, then she could give her my number, which she did.

When I told this story to my dad, he said, "you could date both of them at the same time and choose the most interesting one." I said, "that sounds like that could be a reality show" and without missing a beat he said, "yeah, it could be called Macy's Date Parade."

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