Archive for the ‘Puns’ Category

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In the can

May 30, 2024

Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro takes us to the world of talking tennis balls, where one of them commits a bathroom pun on the noun can ‘cylindrical metal container’:


(#1) Cylindrical metal containers are highly salient to tennis balls, because such cans are how they’re sold (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)

Meanwhile, Wayno’s title for #1 — “Today’s Ballsy Cartoon” — offers a different pun, on (tennis) balls, a mildly raunchy one: ballsy ‘tough, courageous”, a derivative in –y (tricky < trick, mushy < mush, etc.) from crude slang balls ‘testicles’. And my title for this posting (“In the can”) offers another pun on cylindrical container can; from NOAD:

phrase in the can: informal on tape or film and ready to be broadcast or released: all went well, the film was in the can.

Now for some details.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Articles, Comic conventions, Furnishings and tools, Language and sports, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Names, Puns, Slang, Taboo language and slurs, Trade names | Leave a Comment »

Q: What’s woolly, engorged, and good at scaffolding?

May 29, 2024

for the antepenultimate day of May …

A: The Mammoth Erection company, providing scaffolding design and erection services, based in the northern Toronto suburb of Aurora ON.  A genuine company that’s been around for several decades but was only this afternoon brought to my attention (on Facebook). My delighted attention, given that I’m a serious fan of both mammoths (of the woolly sort) and erections (of the penile sort).

One of the company’s enormous trucks, for transporting piles of scaffolding material:


(#1) The company name embraces a pun on the adjective mammoth ‘huge’, as you can see from the company logo in close-up:

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Posted in Ambiguity, Language and the body, Logos, Mammoths, Names, Puns, Trade names | 2 Comments »

The marine biologist on duty

May 25, 2024

Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro is a little treasure chest of interesting morphosemantics, all from a pun on marine biologist, whose everyday use is to refer to a scientist specializing in marine biology:


But instead we get, unexpectedly,  a biologist who is a marine, assigned to duty monitoring aquatic animals (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)

The pun has the USMC noun marine; its base has the sea adjective marine. But that’s just the beginning of the fun.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Compounds, Constructions, Derivation, Linguistics in the comics, Modification, Morphology and syntax, Puns | 3 Comments »

More Kix on Route 66

May 21, 2024

Passed along by two friends on Facebook recently, this Manchild Manor cartoon, deploying Kix breakfast cereal in a pun on the title (of the theme song for a tv show) “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”:


(#1) If you don’t know the song, this cartoon is incomprehensible

(I don’t know where or when this cartoon first appeared, and I couldn’t find it on the (sizable) Instagram page for the strip; I’ve appealed to the cartoonist, but in my experience, most artists view such queries as just a nuisance drag on their time, so they’re not inclined to reply. If he gets back to me, I’ll add his information to this posting.)

[Added on 5/22. Never assume. The cartoonist — Tim Thavirat, now living in San Diego CA after some time in Austin TX — has now replied, and even thanked me for sharing his work on my blog. This cartoon is from 10/25/18, early in the days of his cartoon page — a silly pun that tickled his fancy.]

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Posted in Diners, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Photography, Puns, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »

Shrink me, doctor!

May 19, 2024

Today’s Sunday Bizarro by Dan Piraro, yet another Bizarro Psychiatrist cartoon, this time with a guy in need of a shrink ‘act of shrinking’, appealing to a shrink ‘headshrinker, psychotherapist’ (so it’s a pun cartoon too):


shrink ‘psychotherapist’ has become so ordinary a term in American English that its connection to the change-of-state verb shrink and the noun headshrinker is no longer salient to many speakers, with the result that the pun has some genuine surprise value (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page)

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Posted in Ambiguity, Comic conventions, Etymology, Linguistics in the comics, Pop culture, Puns | Leave a Comment »

A Friday punmanteau

May 17, 2024

In today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, the punning portmanteau pontiff no return:


pontiff  ‘the Pope’ + point of no return ‘point at which turning back is no longer possible’ = pontiff no return ‘the Pope will not return (for some time)’ in a simplified register — foreigner talk, caveman talk, Tonto talk, etc.  (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Portmanteaus, Puns, Style and register | Leave a Comment »

Blutonic dialogue

May 13, 2024

In today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, a Blutonic dialogue: an encounter in which a young woman discusses a platonic relationship with an apparently tamed (and clearly dismayed) incarnation of the villainous and brutal Bluto from the Popeye comics and animations:


(#1) A pun on platonic relationship (NOAD: adj. platonic: (of love or friendship) intimate and affectionate but not sexual) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

Wayno’s title: “The Mistaken Mariner” — simple friendship not being what Bluto had in mind.

Meanwhile, there’s my Blutonic dialogue, a pun on Platonic dialogue:

Plato wrote approximately 35 dialogues, in most of which Socrates is the main character. (Wikipedia link)

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Philosophy, Puns | Leave a Comment »

One of Hilburn’s puns of steel

May 7, 2024

In Pinterest this morning, Scott Hilburn’s Argyle Sweater comic strip of 9/25/20:


(#1) This from the creator of the Puns of Steel collections

#1 is a still from a sad tale of chickpeas smashed to death in a cheap Baltimore apartment, an episode of the tv drama Hummuscide: Life on the Street; meanwhile, death strikes down a rich legume in the novel The Great Garbanzo, in which the title character is murdered by a distraught husband. The grand fictions of Cicer arietinum.

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Posted in Cartoonists, Language and food, Language and plants, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 2 Comments »

Free-range folklore

May 5, 2024

… Wayno’s title for yesterday’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, with its excellent POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) laissez-fairy godmother:


(#1) laissez-faire + fairy godmother yields a hands-off mentor and guide, of not much use to the disgruntled Cinderella, who will now have to do her own prince-finding (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)

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Posted in Dance, Folklore, French, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Puns | Leave a Comment »

A custom-made eggcup

May 4, 2024

Today’s holiday news: today is (at least) three holidays, one deadly serious, two entertaining. I will discourse later about Four Dead in Ohio Day (remembering the 1970 Kent State shootings), Star Wars Day, and (in the US, where May 4th is 5/4) Dave Brubeck Day (for the 5/4 time signature in music). (Oh, there’s also a very local holiday, the Palo Alto May Fête, lightly connected to Cinco de Mayo, which is tomorrow — but the fête is always on a Saturday.)

But first, the actual topic for today: a custom-made eggcup.

The eggcup, 3D-printed in purple and pink plastic, was given to me last Saturday by Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, who recognized that I could use a lightweight, nearly unbreakable replacement for the white porcelain eggcups and demitasse cups that I’ve using for my five daily dosages of medications (an hour before breakfast, with breakfast, with lunch, with dinner, at bedtime) — the porcelain resources I’ve gradually been destroying, smashing by accident because they’re too heavy and slippery for my disabled hands. EDZ’s intention is that there should be more, enough that I can retire the remaining porcelain cups. No more little shards of glass on the kitchen floor.

A photo (inexpertly achieved with my new little camera) of the 3D printing and the porcelain alternatives:


In the front, the 3D delight, looking very purple in the photo; then, on the left, a demitasse cup, and on the right, a conventional eggcup

Two more 3D eggcups have (just) now appeared. Two to go.

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Posted in Art, Furnishings and tools, Holidays, Movies and tv, Music, Puns, Technology | 5 Comments »

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