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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday September 04 2018, @04:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the puns-not-just-for-dads-anymore dept.

Quartz:

Humor me please, and consider the pun. Though some may quibble over the claim, the oft-maligned wordplay is clever and creative, writer James Geary tells Quartz. His upcoming book Wit's End robustly defends puns and tells the distinguished history of these disrespected witticisms.

"Despite its bad reputation, punning is, in fact, among the highest displays of wit. Indeed, puns point to the essence of all true wit—the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time," Geary writes. "And the pun's primacy is demonstrated by its strategic use in the oldest sacred stories, texts, and myths."

[...] Indeed, many a great mind has been inclined to pun. The 18th-century English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought it was practically a prerequisite to intelligence, declaring, "All men who possess at once active dance, imagination, and philosophical spirit, are prone to punning."

US president Abraham Lincoln, despite his somber countenance and grave duties, was famously punny. Once, he received a letter from a Catholic priest asking him to suspend the sentence of a man to be hanged the next day. Lincoln quipped, "If I don't suspend it tonight, the man will surely be suspended tomorrow."

By using the same word—suspend—in two ways, Lincoln illuminates the relationship between the literal and metaphorical, legal and physical senses of a single term. It's a link that in conventional thinking remains invisible, Geary explains.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the groundbreaking psychiatrist and writer Sigmund Freud appreciated puns precisely for this reason. They reveal the accidental connections that our minds make, just as the Freudian slip reveals insights into a person's unconscious thinking.Rhyming ideas

"Puns are all about exchange and they create an intimacy," Geary insists. "You're in it together, sharing a secret. You both figure it out and that play is the archetypal creative aspect of the mind and being in a relationship."


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  • (Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday September 05 2018, @03:05AM (1 child)

    by Beryllium Sphere (r) (5062) on Wednesday September 05 2018, @03:05AM (#730600)

    An orientation toward making puns is common among people in the higher reaches of giftedness.

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  • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday September 05 2018, @01:03PM

    by Rivenaleem (3400) on Wednesday September 05 2018, @01:03PM (#730741)

    By Gifted, I assume you mean poisonous, because puns are toxic.