Happy New Year. It’s nice to have You Near. To celebrate a brand new year, here are 35 brief definitions of words that have the sound noo or n(y)oo in them. Sometimes the word will contain the actual letters new, as in newspaper. In other instances, the word will have a different spelling, as in […]
A few weeks ago, I presented a parade of real-life, verbally clever signs and placards that have adorned places of business around the world. I invited you, my punderful readers, to wing me your own creations. More than 125 entries poured in. Here are the three winners, each of whom will receive a signed copy […]
For the enjoyment and edification of you, my logoleptic pun pals, I present my collection of placards and posters that have appeared around the world. Both literally and figuratively they are signs of our times, times in which we English users love to fiddle with words and to laugh at the loony tunes that such […]
A mnemonic device is a shortcut memory aid to storing facts fast and accurately. Mnemonic (the m is silent) is eponymously derived from Mnemosyne, the shadowy daughter of Uranus and Gaea, a wife of Zeus and mother of the nine muses. Mnemosyne caught Zeus’s eye when he decided that he wanted to record — so […]
If you’re like me, you have, from time to time, encountered a situation that cried out for a snappy verbal comeback. But the comeback flashed in your mind a few minutes to a few hours too late and you could only sigh wistfully, “I wish I had thought of that line then.” There’s actually a […]
A few weeks ago, I featured the clerihew, a form of nonsense verse invented 125 years ago by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956). The clerihew (usually lowercased) is a whimsical, pseudo-biographical quatrain (four lines) rhymed (often outrageously) as two couplets with short, pithy lines of uneven length and meter. The name of the individual who is […]
Late in the 19th century, a daydreaming British preppie named Edmund Clerihew Bentley gave the world a new form of nonsense verse. Author of the story “Trent’s Last Case,” Bentley (1875-1956) is best remembered as the inventor of the clerihew (his mother’s maiden name and his middle name). Bentley’s son, Nicholas, wrote, “I think it […]
Dear Mr. Lederer, You’re hilarious. Thanks so much for entertaining and educating us. Speaking of hilarious, one of my favorite characters is Mrs. Malaprop. Surely she’s one of yours, too. — Valerie Swink, Encinitas When people misuse words in an illiterate but humorous manner, we call the result a malapropism. The word echoes the […]
Starting in 1910, American boys grew up devouring the adventures of Tom Swift, created by Edward J. Stratemeyer. More than 100 books in the series have been published, the latest in 2007. Based on real-life inventors Glenn Curtis, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, Tom was a sterling hero and natural scientific genius. Many of his […]
A set-up pun is a conspiracy of narrative and word play. In set-up punnery, the punster contrives an imaginary situation that leads up to a climax punningly, cunningly and stunningly based on a well-known expression or title. In a good set-up pun, we groan at the absurdity of the situation while admiring the ingenuity with […]