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pun

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Pun


Figure of speech, a play on words, or double meaning that is technically known as paronomasia (Greek ‘adapted meaning’). Double meaning can be accidental, often resulting from homonymy, or the multiple meaning of words; puns, however, are deliberate, intended as jokes or as clever and compact remarks.

The success of a pun is a matter of taste; if an ominous horoscope is called a ‘horrorscope’ or a genetic experiment is characterized as producing ‘designer genes’, this may or may not be regarded as witty or useful. Puns may depend on either the sound or the look of a word, or may require some modification of the words in question to produce their effect (for example, a political meeting described as ‘coming apart at the themes’, echoing ‘seams’).

© Research Machines plc 2008. All rights reserved. Helicon Publishing is a division of Research Machines plc.


 
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deus ex machina
alliteration
ambiguity
anachronism
analogy
anecdote
anthropomorphism
anticlimax
antithesis
antonym
assonance
bathos
black humour
climax
comic relief
conceit
connotation
couplet
device
double entendre
emotive language
euphemism
figure of speech
grotesque (literature)
half-rhyme
hyperbole
imagery
irony
lampoon
literary criticism
metaphor
metonymy
onomatopoeia
oxymoron
parody
pastiche
personification
pun
rhetoric
rhyme
rhythm (poetry)
satire
simile (language)
symbol (general)
synecdoche
synonymy
synthesis (literature)
tautology
zeugma

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