Scoffing Puns

I went to my dentist yesterday, and after about a half an hour of cleaning and filling I finally could go home. Before I left he stopped me and said,

"Hey man, you better lay off the sweets, you'll get cavities."

I scoffed and replied, "I'll be fine doc."

Today I took a bite into my third chocolate bar and suddenly a jolt of pain shot from my tooth,

"OW MOTHERFU--"

I went to the dentist again, running inside. He turned to me and smirked,

"The tooth hurts, doesn't it?"

As a child growing up, everyone scoffed when I told them I wanted to be a comedian when I was older.

Well nobody is laughing now...

My four year old was watching a Disney movie while I was in the kitchen. The app we use for Disney on the tv is horribly unreliable (Disney life on amazon firestick), randomly freezing or restarting whatever we're watching.

Anyway, I'm scoffing a cake I don't want her to have when I hear a shout.

"Daddy, the film is frozen."

I go through, look at the TV and tell her "No it's not, that's Moana."

I think it's the first time she's both gotten one of my jokes and appreciated how crap it is. Her eye roll and "ugh" brought a tear to my eye.

My dad was just flicking through a gadget magazine and was scoffing at the music section:

Dad: "It's weird how turntables have made a comeback, I remember a few years ago you couldn't even give them away"

Me: "Yeah, I guess the tables have turned"

A hornbill in a rainforest screeched triumphantly! “Hahaha I am the king of the birds for I have the biggest beak.” He sat on his branch smugly, smiling to himself when another bird with an extraordinary beak landed beside him and scoffed,“Toucan play at that game.”

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

A male drone bee ejaculates with such force it causes his genitals to explode, resulting in his death.

One such bee, upon learning of this, took a vow of celibacy and swore off sex forever.

When news reached the queen she scoffed and said "How very unbecoming of him."

We were getting ready to leave for the gym when his little brother walks in wearing a Superman costume and yells, "I'M THE STRONGEST MAN ALIVE!!!!" My friend was annoyed with his brother and scoffed something about, "Luke you can't even bench the bar." Luke starts to giggle and said, "I bench you I can!"

In my computer science course, my very old professor busts this out during a discussion of logic:

"I went to a logic conference once, and the lecturer said, 'it's interesting that a double negative gives you a positive, isn't it? I mean, a double positive doesn't give you a negative.'

Someone from the back of the room scoffed and went, 'yeah, yeah.'"

Half the class chuckled, half the class groaned.

There once was a Viking by the name of Rudolph the Red. One day, whilst tending to his fields, Rudolph spotted rain clouds on the horizon. He immediately dropped what he was doing and ran inside his hut to tell his wife.

"Honey, there are dark clouds on the horizon. The rains' will be here any minute" he said. She scoffed at him, "Rudolph you old fool. How could you possibly know that?" Angered by this, Rudolph turned to her and said...

"Rudolph the Red knows rain dear!"