I’ve been hearing lots of people talking about or referencing puns that don’t really seem to be puns. For example, take this quote from CNN: “If anyone fired a shot in that park, the rangers would be over there faster than a speeding bullet, if you’ll excuse the pun.”
Somehow, this doesn’t seem like a pun to me. But I can’t really come up with another name for it, and all of the definitions for “pun” that I can find on the web are vague enough to include it.
So, is this a pun? Why or why not? If not, what exactly is a pun?
Hm, the way I read the definition, the example you post in your OP would fit. Shots fired, speeding bullet. Works as a pun for me - plays on both definitions of speeding bullet - figurative and literal.
I read that CNN article before coming here, thought to myself “that’s not a pun,” and then thought of that exact same quote when I read the title of this thread. I didn’t think it was a pun then and I don’t now.
I agree with TellMeI’mNotCrazy. It’s not the traditional usage of a pun, where a play is made on, say, the common synonym for “to arrive” and “to have an orgasm.” But it is a wordplay in that a common, idiomatic usage is played on for its literal meaning.
Amusing and poignant anecdote: Very shortly after we were married, Barb and I were living in Syracuse, running a small bookstore that did not get off the ground financially, and with limited funds to keep us until a drawdown on restricted-access savings could be processed and sent to us. For obvious reasons, we were counting pennies. And she got a half-full half-gallon milk carton out of the refrigerator, but it was slippery and dropped out of her hands, allowing much of the milk to empty out onto the floor. Stressed out, she burst into tears. And I tried to comfort her, and said the first thing that came into my mind: “Hey, don’t cry, honey. There’s no use crying over…” And at that point we both realized what came next, and burst into hysterical laughter. And then we went out and got more milk, stress relieved, and the check came two days later.
No, it’s not a pun. As the definition indicates, a pun involved either the substitution of one word or phrase for another (“You can’t fool me; there ain’t no sanity clause.”), or, less commonly, the use of a secondary definition of one word for another (“Make a pun, sir.” “On what subject?” “On the king.” “The king is not a subject; he is king.”). Neither applies here.
In the example given, it’s just a commonly used phrase whose meaning can, in this case, be taken literally, too. There is nothing in the phrase that has a secondary meaning to the literal one. I don’t believe this type of construction has any common name, though, but the more common way to express it would be to include “literally” (wrongly used, of course): “They would literally be there faster than a speeding bullet.”
From “YPS:The Ynperfect Pun Selector for Computational Humor,” Dr. Hempelmann’s Ph.D. thesis about puns:
Puns are simplest joke type to formalize and implement:
script oppositeness (SO): scripts in ontological semantics
logical mechanism (LM) for script overlap: sound similarity in OT phonology
Two selection criteria working against each other:
sound similarity (overlap) [=LM]
for target recovery
cratylistic joke logic
denote two meanings in a humorous relation [=SO] (incongruity)
That is, in order to be a joke, a text must contain a script opposition(SO) (a la Raskin 1985); in order for this joke to be a pun, its logical mechanism (LM) must be cratylistic (Attardo, Hempelmann, and deMaio 2002, following Attardo 2001). The essence of a pun is that, in the place of one word, one can insert two different, phonologically similar words that evoke opposing–or at least different–scripts.
Raskin’s script-based theory of humor is only one of the four main “gospels” of humor, but it’s the one to which I subscribe. Every year at the International Society for Humor Studies conference, there is a big tussle between that camp and the others.
I heard an excellent pun on the radio last night. :-
" Yesterday I picked up a pack of sausages. On it was a picture of Anthony Worrell Thompson* in his kitchen . Printed below the picture were the words ‘prick with a fork’ . I thought that was a bit harsh even for this guy "
And then we went out and got more milk, stress relieved, and the check came two days later.