Puns

choi

Prizes for puns l The Quip and the Dread; Why English is the language of champuns. Economist, Aug 12, 2017
https://www.economist.com/news/b ... such-great-language
(book review on Joe Berkowitz, Away With Words; An irreverent tour through the world of pun competitions. Harper Perennial, 2017)

Note:
(a) "LAST week's issue of this paper contained the following headlines: 'Rooms for improvement' (in a story about British housing); 'Though Mooch is taken, Mooch abides' (on the firing of Anthony Scaramucci); and and 'LIBOR pains' (on interbank loan rates). The Economist is not alone in its taste for wordplay. Our colleagues at the Financial Times routinely sneak subtle jokes into their headlines (July 17: 'Why China's global shipping ambitions will not easily be contained' [dealing with shipment of containers] ) while those at the tabloids indulge themselves more obviously. On the arrest of a famous golfer for drink-driving: 'DUI [driving under influence] of the Tiger.' "
(i) Ordinarily: "room [mass noun (ie, uncountable) ] for improvement,"
(ii)
(A) Anthony Scaramucci (last name Italian; call himself "The Mooch" -- from the last two syllables of the last name, which is too long to pronounce or remember).
(B) Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses. Academy of American Poets (1934- ; a non-profit), undated
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/ulysses
("Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are")
* en.wikipedia.org summarizes this poem: "An oft-quoted poem, it is popularly used to illustrate the dramatic monologue form. Facing old age, mythical hero Ulysses describes his discontent and restlessness upon returning to his kingdom, Ithaca, after his far-ranging travels. Despite his reunion with his wife Penelope and son Telemachus, Ulysses yearns to explore again.
* dramatic monologue (n): "a poem in the form of a speech or narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events"https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dramatic_monologue
* Shmoop Editorial Team, Lines 65-70 Summary. In "Shmoop" (a book). Shmoop University, Inc, Nov 11, 2008
https://www.shmoop.com/ulysses-tennyson/lines-65-70-summary.html
("Ulysses yet again tells us that even though he and his sailors are old and don't have a lot of gas left in the tank, there's enough left to go a little farther")
* abide (vi): "to remain stable or fixed in a state <a love that abode with him all his days>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abide
(iii) ordinarily: "labor pains"  (LIBOR stands for London Interbank Offered Rate).
(iv) The cover of both New York Post and New York Daily News on May 30, 2017 shows a mug shot of Tiger Wood and "DUI OF THE TIGER."  The headline alluded to "eye of the tiger."
(A) nystagmus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nystagmus
("In the United States, testing for horizontal gaze nystagmus [HGN] is one of a battery of field sobriety tests used by police officers to determine whether a suspect is driving under the influence of alcohol")
(B) Eye of the Tiger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_the_Tiger
(a 1982 song by an American band "Survivor," for the 1982 film "Rocky III")

, whose pertinent portion of the lyrics is this stanza:

"It's the eye of the tiger, it's the dream of the fight
Risin' up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night
And he's watchin' us all with the eye of the tiger

(C) The "the last known survivor" is the key: last man standing -- according to Mark Cohen, managing director at GreyCliff Strategic Venture Group LLC.
(D) Web: I've found/He has  the eye of the tiger.

That means "a feeling of confidence or power."

choi

b) "English is unusually good for puns. It has a large vocabulary and a rich stock of homophones from which puns can be made. It is constantly evolving, with new words being invented and old ones given fresh meanings. And it is mostly uninflected, allowing for verbs and nouns to switch places. Moreover, other than the occasional customary feminine pronoun, for ships, say, or nation-states, it has no gendered nouns, which makes it easier to play with innuendo and double entendres. (Chinese is another good language for punsters, which is a boon for those keen to avoid the country’s censors. Puns are especially popular around Chinese new year.)"

(c) "over the past few years a growing band of amateurs has taken up the sport. In New York a monthly event called Punderdome features jokesters with pseudonyms such as 'Punder Enlightening,' 'Jargon Slayer' and 'Words [Worst] Nightmare.' Similar competitions exist in Washington, DC, (Beltway Pundits), Milwaukee (Pundamonium [pun for pandemonium), San Francisco (Bay Area Pun-Off) and elsewhere. The annual O Henry Pun-Off in Austin, Texas, which started in 1978, bills itself as the genre's World Championship. (Word Champunship, surely?)"
(i) Punderdome:
"Thunderdome is an arena for steel-cage jousting [till death; check images.google.com to see what it looks like] in the Australian post-apocalyptic film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)."
(ii)  
(A) O Henry Pun-Off is held at William Sidney Porter House at Austin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sidney_Porter_House
(B) pun-off (n): "a contest where people compete in making puns"
http://glosbe.com/en/en/pun-off

Glosbe is an online dictionary. The term is modeled after " 'cook-off' (1936) to 'bake-off' (1949)." (Word Detective's words.)
(iii) "Word Champunship, surely?"
(A) In the Web, I find the following question:
Should "Surely I must be wrong" end with a question mark?
(B) The answer:
Do Rhetorical Questions Need a Question Mark?
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com ... eed-a-question-mark
(Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl, on July 10, 2009: "a rhetorical question, and it can end in either a question mark or an exclamation point, and in dialogue you can sometimes even have a speaker's rhetorical question end in a period. * * * Rhetorical questions like this take a negative form")

choi

(d) "puns demand intelligence, creativity and general knowledge: the best draw on cultural references, allude to several things at the same time and are intricately constructed (such as the one about Mahatma Gandhi, who walked barefoot a lot and often fasted, leading to [frailty and ] bad breath, thus making him a 'super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis'). The Harry Potter series would be less magical without Knockturn Alley and Diagon Alley."
(i) Can anybody please explain to me the pun in this line: 'super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis'?  Yahoo Answer, Dec 26, 2009
https://answers.yahoo.com/questi ... 091226033000AAaHzu5
(A: "The pun refers to the line from the original Mary Poppins musical-movie:

The song "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"

If you read the words 'super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis' fast and slur them
together, you will read the word (or something that sounds like) 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' ")
(A) Mary Poppins (film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Poppins_(film)
(1964; produced by Walt Disney)
(B) Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (from 'Mary Poppins') - Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke Disney. YouTube.com, published by DisneyMusicVEVO, Mar 27, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRFHXMQP-QU

You may find the lyrics online ("It's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!").
(C) definition:
* callous (adj +  vt: "callus" as a noun; Did You Know?)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/callous
* halitosis
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/halitosis
* supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (adj; etymology)
https://en.oxforddictionaries.co ... isticexpialidocious
(ii) places in Harry Potter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_in_Harry_Potter
(section 3 Diagon Alley: "is a fictional high street located in London. * * * The name Diagon Alley is a near homophone of the word 'diagonally,' which is used as a plot device when Harry mispronounces the phrase near the beginning of the Chamber of Secrets film"/ section 3.6 Knockturn Alley)

choi

(e) "This reviewer [in Economist] disregards any pun that requires a hyphen (ovicular puns are egg-specially eggs-cruciating)"
(i) This is the online version; in print, it is "ovine puns are egg-specially eggs-cruciating)."

Online, at the bottom of the article is:
"Correction (August 15th, 2017): As many commenters and letter-writers have pointed out, 'ovine' means relating to sheep, not eggs. The correct word is ovicular. This has been amended. Apologies for the woolly thinking [a pun, directed at  'ovine']."

* woolly (adj; less commonly wooly): "marked by mental confusion  <woolly thinking>"
(ii) ovicular (adj; etymology)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ovicular

(f) "A pun, like porn, is defined less by intention than by reception. One contestant at the O. Henry, on the topic of birds, told the audience [using eagle as a theme], 'Beak [Be] kind to me, don't thrush [rush] to judgment, I'm not robin [robbing] anyone, hawking anything, talon tails out of school, ducking responsibilities or emulating anyone.' "
(i) "A pun, like porn, is defined less by intention than by reception."
(A) Mari Mikkola, Beyond Speech; Pornography and analytic feminist philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2017, at page 127
https://books.google.com/books?i ... ception&f=false
("Paraphrasing Justice Stewart, we know pornography when we see it; but different people see different artifacts as pornography. * * * The 'I know it when I see it' retort fixes [this is the verb] the class of pornographic artifacts based on the audience reception -- maker's intentions are neither here nor there")
(B) Jacobellis v Ohio (1964) US 184, 197 (Justice Potter [Potter being the first name] Stewart concurring: "But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that")
(ii) thrush (bird)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrush_(bird)
(iii) Telling Tales out of School. The Phrase Finder, Aug 29, 2004.
www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/34/messages/168.html