Before You Groan at Another Dad Joke, Read This
Maybe his humour was more complex than you thought.
If you have ever rolled your eyes from embarrassment, it was probably a reaction to hearing your dad crack a joke like this one.
This juvenile humour is not everyone’s cup of tea, but there is a clever art to a dad joke that not everyone can master — the power of wordplay, also known as cracking a clever pun.
I’m a woman in her twenties without any kids, so I’m as far from being a dad as I could possibly be. But I am a certified word nerd and professional pundit.
I crack puns at any given opportunity and have cultivated a reputation in my friend groups as being a lover of wordplay. There is no pun that is too cringe-inducing to work into a conversation.
Puns are something that people either have an appreciation for or groan at ––there is no in-between. I hope by the end of this article, once I’ve elaborated on my love for wordplay, I can classify you as the former.
So what puns are out there?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a pun is, “ the usually humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound”.
The aptly titled book, The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack dissects the anatomy, meaning and cultural significance of the modern-day pun. Pollack won the 1995 O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships (yes, there are events where people compete to out-pun one another).
He outlines a few ways to categorize puns. Spoiler alert: there are many of them, and I won’t be able to do a deep dive here, but I’ll elaborate on a few of the most common examples you’ll come across. I highly recommend reading Pollack’s book to learn more.
Homophonic puns play on words that sound alike to one another. An example would be:
“The excitement at the circus was in tents!”
This example plays on how completely different words, “intense” and “in tents”, sound alike to give the sentence a dual meaning.
Homographic puns rely on how a single word can have more than one meaning. Here’s another example from Reddit, where the word, “case” refers to both “suitcase”, and a “case” that one brings to court.
My personal favourite is the visual pun, which relies on imagery to get a dual meaning across. This is one I made when I visited the London Eye in the U.K. I was quite proud of myself for coming up with it.
Puns Can Change the World
According to Pollack, the power of a pun comes from its ambiguity, which enables you to pack layers of meaning into fewer words — making puns a popular choice for making political statements.
The slogan, “Girls just want to have fundamental rights” plays on the title of Cyndi Lauper’s hit single, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, and made a powerful statement for the feminist movement at a Women’s March in Washington, D.C.
Puns at feminist marches and rallies often spark dialogue and engagement with a conversation. This pun simultaneously flips stereotypical narratives of women on its head while making a point about gender equality.
Who knew that wordplay could be so powerful and create a message that sticks?
The Power of Puns Connects Us All
As a writer, I love the multifaceted nature of puns — they make us laugh, they make us cringe, they make us realize what is wrong with our world and take a stand. We might just be going about our day and writing another article for Medium, but puns are a reminder of the power our words have to convince, persuade, and uplift one another.
If you ever do decide to crack a pun or dad joke, you’ll elicit either a groan or a laugh, but either way, you’ll get to revel in a connection with someone else based on the play on words you’ve created.
It’s a punderful life.
Reference:
Pollack, John. (2012). The pun also rises: How the humble pun revolutionized language, changed history, and made wordplay more than some antics. Penguin Putnam.
