Punography

Каламбурография

In the early eighteenth century a jeering-impaired (обыгрывается hearing-impaired – слабослышащий; to jeer – насмехаться) playwright and critic named John Dennis scowled that a pun is the lowest form of wit. Two centuries later a fellow named Henry Erskine pun-upped (to one-up – обойти на 1 очко, обыграть на очко) him with «if a pun is the lowest form of wit, it is, therefore, the foundation of all wit».

Many see puns as cheap humour, one-liners, or groaners, despite their prevalence in our culture. They are most often seen in the names of businesses, or advertising. Others, like the writer Jonathan Swift, see them as a challenging art form, where one shapes words like a cobbler bends leather. 'Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words,' said Swift, 'which, passing in at the ears, excites a titillary motion in those parts; and this, being conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of the heart.'

However the dictionary describes a pun as:

pun
n.
A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words

In Italian, puntiglio means 'a fine point,' hence a verbal quibble, and is most likely the source of the English 'punctilious', which means showing great attention to detail and 'correct' behaviour. There developed, in late 17th and early 18th Century England, a short-lived, fanciful word called 'pundigrion', which indeed was a term for what we now know as a pun. Since snappy monosyllables produced by breaking off pieces of longer words were all the rage back then (были последним писком моды), it is widely thought that this is how and where the word 'pun' was created. This then lead to words that have stemmed from 'pun' including punning, and punny - a pun in and of itself. Paronomasia denotes the act or practice of punning.

Puns are not always humorous, and sometimes not even intended to be humorous. Much like popular fads that no one will admit to supporting, puns are looked down upon and criticized. However, as people like Jonathan Swift all the way through to Ronnie Barker have shown, paronomasia is an active, and timeless craft.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-19