ENDNOTES
THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF NONFICTION, THE CONTENTS OF which include original scholarship as well as material from more than two hundred books, articles, interviews, conversations, pamphlets, illustrations, songs, plays, videos, movies, TV shows, Web sites and direct observations of contemporary material and social culture. For stylistic purposes I omitted endnote numbers from the text itself. The following notes, organized by chapter and page number, identify the principal sources of key ideas, quotes and other materials I have cited in the book.
EPIGRAPH
ix. Language, be it remembered, is not an abstract construction of the learned: Walt Whitman, Essay on Slang (1885), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, David Crystal, Editor (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 87.
CHAPTER ONE
2. Those learned pundits who would gather there: Robert Hewitt, Jr., Coffee: Its History, Cultivation and Uses (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1872), p. 26.
2. Whatever the accent ought to have been: Hewitt, Coffee, p. 27 [italics original].
2. Carved records from the first millennium BC: Georges Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966), pp. 167–168.
3. In Gilgamesh, angry gods decide to flood the earth: Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon, p. 194.
3. In order to calm suspicious neighbors: Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon, p. 168.
3. But kibtu and kukku were also puns: Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon, p. 168.
3. HOLY SHIITE read one of the paper’s irreverent headlines: New York Post, May 17, 2005, p. A1.
4. RUMS FELLED proclaimed yet another: New York Post, November 9, 2006, p. A1.
4. “Keep playing!” someone shouted: New York Daily News, January 2, 1940, pp. 1, 23.
5. The word mob was clipped from mobile vulgus: Ernest Weekley, The Romance of Words (Bibliobazaar, 2008), p. 80.
5. But for all its musings: Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 832.
5. Some etymologists posit: Henry Hitchings, The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English (New York: Picador, 2008), p. 229.
5. Sanskrit itself means synthesized: Hitchings, Secret Life of Words, p. 229.
5. “Pundits,” he writes: Hitchings, Secret Life of Words, p. 229.
6. According to Dr. Terttu Nevalainen: The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. III, 1476–1776 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 376.
6. The first appearance of the word pun: Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 832.
6. Other Sanskrit stowaways of the period: Cambridge History of the English Language, p. 376.
6. The comedy ushered in a new type: David Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 72.
7. And while Skeat confirms that pundit can indeed be traced: The Rev. Walter W. Skeat, Litt.D., D.C.L., LL.D, Ph.D., F.B.A. Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Christ’s College, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, New Edition Revised and Enlarged, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 484–85.
8. Liberman cites a 1641 production: The Oxford Etymologist (blog), February 10, 2010.
8. Liberman debunks the competing pretenders: The Oxford Etymologist (blog), February 10, 2010.
8. One sometimes wishes for a punitive expedition: The Oxford Etymologist (blog), February 10, 2010.
9. As his best educated guess at the root of pun, Liberman suggests: The Oxford Etymologyst (blog), February 10, 2010.
9. Carried back to England in the pockets of a sailor or two: Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), p. 737.
9. Webster’s dictionary defines a pun as: Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1993), p. 1842.
9. But such definitions don’t capture all forms: OED, p. 832; and Webster’s International, p. 1842.
9. But there is a distinction between the two: Paul Hammond and Patrick Hughes, Upon the Pun (London: A Star Book, published by The Paperback Division of W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd., 1978), Chapter 1 (the book’s pages are not numbered).
10. A play on words only works if the two things it relates are already intrinsically connected: Hammond and Hughes, Upon the Pun, Chapter 16.
10. By contrast, the alternate meanings of scale stem from the same etymological root: Hammond and Hughes, Upon the Pun, Chapter 1.
11. As the story goes, a long-winded congressman from the area named Felix Walker gave a lengthy and vacuous speech: Hammond and Hughes, Upon the Pun, Chapter 4.
11. As the polymath writer Arthur Koestler noted, the etymological roots of any given pun are irrelevant: Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London: Hutchinson, 1964), p. 65.
11. In one particularly rigorous deconstruction of humor entitled The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes: Graeme Ritchie, The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 199.
12. The bride was in tears, and the cake was in tiers: Ritchie, The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes, p. 128.
12. “Young man,” he shouted, “cunts are not for pissing in!”: Hammond and Hughes, Upon the Pun, Chapter 20.
12. Intending to express a “half-formed wish”: Hammond and Hughes, Upon the Pun, Chapter 20.
12. While some Spooner scholars suggest that these specific examples are likely apocryphal: William Hayter, Spooner, A Biography (London: W.H. Allen, A Howard & Wyndham Company, 1977), pp. 136–146; and Michael Erard, Um . . . Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), p. 16.
12. In one well-documented instance, Spooner, a minister who spoke often from the pulpit: Hayter, Spooner, p. 137.
12. When baptizing twins named Kate and Sydney: Rossell Hope Robbins, “The Warden’s Wordplay,” Dalhousie Review (Halifax: Review Publishing Company, Winter 1966–67), p. 463.
13. This last specimen was so ripe with possibility: Hayter, Spooner, p. 138.
13. According to biographer William Hayter, Spooner was embarrassed by his penchant for verbal blunders: Hayter, Spooner, p. 137; and Erard, Um . . . Slips, Stumbles, p. 16.
13. A few decades earlier, medical students in London had called them Marrowskys: British Medical Journal, March 14 1998; v316 (7134), p. 845; and Robbins, “The Warden’s Wordplay,” p. 461; and Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Seventh Edition (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1974), p. 510.
13. According to Hayter, one reason that Spoonerisms spread so widely: Hayter, Spooner, p. 137.
14. Citing an 1889 article in Scribner’s, Erard tells of a horrific train accident: Erard, Um . . . Slips, Stumbles, p. 26.
14. Punning away, the British humor magazine Punch: Hayter, Spooner, p. 138.
14. In Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes, Jim Holt cites compelling evidence: Holt, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008), p. 11.
15. Holt notes that jokes were popular enough in the ancient world: Holt, Stop Me, p. 8.
15. A few centuries later, Marcus Tullius Cicero: Harry Thurston Peck, Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1897).
15. One rule he did practice, however, was to claim authorship: H. Bennett, “The Wit’s Progress—A Study in the Life of Cicero,” The Classical Journal, Vol. XXX, No. 4 (January 1935), p. 194.
15. The punch line is only humorous if you know: Holt, Stop Me, p. 13; and Graham Anderson, “ΛΗΚΥΘΙOΝ and ΑΥΤOΛΗΚΥΘOΣ,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 101 (1981), pp. 130–132.
16. For instance, an epitaph to a nineteenth-century musician summed up his life: C. Grant Loomis, “Traditional American Word Play: Wellerisms or Yankeeisms,” American Folklore, Vol. 8, No. 1 (January 1949), p. 1.
17. Only when he introduced the streetwise Weller did the novel take off: Florence E. Baer, “Wellerisms in The Pickwick Papers,” Folklore (Vol. 94, No. 2, 1983), p. 173.
17. But original or not, and fanned by newspaper editors: Loomis, “Traditional American Word Play,” pp. 1–2.
18. Add that to his popular Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Rover Boys and Bobsey Twins series: Bob Cook, Tom Swift and His Amazing Works Catalog (Newport Beach: Self-published, 1995), p. 3.
20. According to researchers at Indiana University’s Folklore Archives: Jan Harold Brunvand, “A Classification for Shaggy Dog Stories,” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 76, No. 299 (Jan–March, 1963), pp. 42–68.
20. In The ‘Shaggy Dog’ Story—Its Origin, Development and Nature (with a few seemly examples): Eric Partridge, The ‘Shaggy Dog’ Story—Its Origin, Development and Nature (with a few seemly examples) (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1953), p. 14.
22. In the abstract, yes. But not in the concrete!: Bennett Cerf, Bennett Cerf’s Treasury of Atrocious Puns (New York, Evanston and London: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 42.
22. According to artificial intelligence researchers at the University of Cincinnati: Julia M. Taylor and Lawrence J. Mazlack, “Computationally Recognizing Wordplay in Jokes,” Proceedings of Cognitive Science Conference, 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Cognitive Science Society Inc., 2004).
23. In other words, even talented programmers had trouble encoding the subtle rules: Taylor and Mazlack, “Computationally Recognizing Wordplay in Jokes.”
24. The porter is suggesting that the dishonest tailor warm his seam-sealing iron: William Shakespeare, Macbeth: The DVD Edition (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), p. 62.
24. In a paper entitled “Better than the Original: Humorous Translations that Succeed”: Don F. Nilsen, “Better Than the Original: Humorous Translations that Succeed,” Meta: Journal des Traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (1989), p. 112.
24. Retranslated into English: Nilsen, “Better Than the Original.”
25. It’s because the Polish word: Nilsen, “Better Than the Original.”
25. The horse manure: G. Legman, No Laughing Matter: An Analysis of Sexual Humor, Vol. I (Bloomington: Reprinted by Indiana University Press. Originally published by Grove Press as Rationale of the Dirty Joke, 1968), p. 179.
26. Well, I don’t know how that American chap did it: Legman, No Laughing Matter, p. 179.
26. Rectitude—the formal, dignified bearing: All neologisms from The Washington Post.
27. Next, layer by layer, the birds were to be inserted: Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière, L’Almanach des Gourmands (Paris: L’Imprimerie de Cellot, 1807), pp. 239–245.
27. Correctly anticipating that government censors would identify mandatory redactions: Giles MacDonogh, A Palate in Revolution: Grimod de La Reynière and the Almanach des Gourmand (London: Robin Clark Limited, 1987), p. 76.
28. Because the only task a real gourmand faces: Author e-mail correspondence with Michele Hume (Grimod translator), February 22, 2010.
29. Ravenous hogs had eaten his hands: MacDonogh, A Palate in Revolution, p. 7.
29. Madame ma mère, Grimod said: MacDonogh, A Palate in Revolution, p. 76.
29. To some eyes, however, it made him look like a hedgehog: MacDonogh, A Palate in Revolution, p. 20; and author email correspondence with Michele Hume (Grimod translator), February 22, 2010.
29. I’ll be round tomorrow to comb your hair for you: MacDonogh, see preceding note.
CHAPTER 2
31. This let him probe different parts of the brain: Hans Lüders and Youssef G. Comair, Epilepsy Surgery (Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Second Edition, 2001), p. 24.
32. Foerster was seeking to remove a tumor from a man’s third ventricle: Koestler, The Act of Creation, p. 315; and Gray’s Anatomy, 15th Edition (Reprinted by Barnes & Noble Books in 1995), p. 649; and Sandra Aamdodt and Sam Wang, Welcome to Your Brain (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008), p. 85.
32. Koestler described it as a gruesome kind of humor: Koestler, The Act of Creation, p. 316.
32. Koestler went on to note that the patient’s apparently delirious punning: Koestler, The Act of Creation, p. 316.
32. Koestler likened such a layered, mysterious process to that of the poet: Koestler, The Act of Creation, pp. 316–317.
33. Witzelsucht, derived from the German words for “wit” and “obsession”: William Alexander Newman Dorland, Dorland’s Medical Dictionary online (Saunders, 2007).
33. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains: Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1994), p. 18.
33. Pinker encourages people to think of language as an instinct: Pinker, The Language Instinct, p. 20.
34. The system is so sensitive that it can detect: Author e-mail correspondence with Dr. Josef Miller, Adjunct Professor of Biopsychology at the University of Michigan.
34. Paleontologists believe that this adaptation helped early mammals coexist with dinosaurs: Natalie Angier, “In Mammals, a Complex Journey to the Middle Ear,” The New York Times, October 13, 2009, p. D2.
36. CHILD’S STOOL GREAT FOR USE IN GARDEN: Pinker, The Language Instinct, p. 79.
36. But inside a single head, the demands are different: Pinker, The Language Instinct, p. 81.
36. He suggests that people don’t think in specific languages per se: Pinker, The Language Instinct, p. 81.
37. As such, Pinker says that knowing a language is knowing how to translate mentalese: Pinker, The Language Instinct, pp. 81–82.
37. If we had to express every concept with a different word: Author interview with Noam Chomsky, March 30, 2010.
38. It is this innate biological ability: Pinker, The Language Instinct, pp. 22–24 and The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Tom McArthur, ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 214–215.
39. At first glance, the brain looks something like a cauliflower: Jay Jacobs, The Eaten Word (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1995), p. 168.
39. Immediately behind the brain stem is the cerebellum: David Crystal, How Language Works (Woodstock and New York: The Overlook Press, 2005), p. 171.
39. Generally speaking, the left hemisphere also dominates in organization: Crystal, How Language Works, pp. 173–174.
40. But within a fraction of a second, the right hemisphere springs into action: Seana Coulson and Els Severens, “Hemispheric asymmetry and pun comprehension: When cowboys have sore calves,” Brain and Language, Volume 100 (2007), p. 172.
40. At least two other nearby structures also get to work: Crystal, How Language Works, pp. 176–177.
41. And in 2005, researchers from the University of California: Coulson and Severens, “Hemispheric asymmetry, and pun comprehension,” p. 172.
42. An archeologist’s career ended in ruins: All puns from Coulson and Severens, “Hemispheric asymmetry,” pp. 185–186.
42. And while both hemispheres engage when called on to process a pun: Coulson and Severens, “Hemispheric asymmetry,” p. 184.
42–43. Bayes showed how to accurately estimate the probability of various scenarios: Henry N. Pollack, Uncertain Science, Uncertain World (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 161.
44. Only when kindness fails: John Allen Paulos, Mathematics and Humor (Chicago and London: A Phoenix Book, published by the University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 60–61.
44. The brain responds to the fit between word and context well before people have actually heard the end of the word: Jos J. A. Van Berkum, “Understanding Sentences in Context: What Brain Waves Can Tell Us,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 17 No. 6 (2008), p. 376.
45. The linguistic brain seems much more ‘messy’ and opportunistic: Van Berkum, “Understanding Sentences,” p. 378.
45. According to Van Berkum, the brain actually takes shortcuts: Van Berkum, “Understanding Sentences,” p. 379.
46. After priming, reaction time dropped: Cynthia G. Wible, et al., “Connectivity among semantic associates: An fMRI study of semantic priming,” Brain and Language 97 (2006), p. 294.
46. This delay was especially pronounced among women: James H. Geer and Jeffrey S. Melton, “Sexual Content-Induced Delay With Double-Entendre Words,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 26, No. 3 ( 1997), p. 295.
46–47. Studies have found that different people actually use different combinations of brain systems: The New York Times Book of Language and Linguistics (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003), pp. 60–62.
47. Afterward, they ranked those they’d classified as funny on a 1–10 scale: Eiman Azim, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 102, No. 45 (November 8, 2005), p. 16,497.
47. This finding is consistent with evidence that women, compared to men, often have a relatively larger Broca’s area: Azim, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, p. 16,500.
47. Third, the dopamine rewards they experienced when a cartoon actually did seem funny were higher: Azim, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, p. 16,500.
47–48. However, the researchers suggest that this intensity of reward might not have been due to the fact that women found a given cartoon any funnier than the men did: Azim, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, p. 16,500.
48. Laughter is literally the ritualization of rough-and-tumble play: Author interview with Robert R. Provine, April 7, 2010.
49. The ability to override so vital a function as breathing in the service of sound making was a revolutionary event: Robert R. Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (New York: Viking, 2000), p. 84.
49. In other words, learning to walk upright laid the physiological foundation: Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation, pp. 86–88.
49. An efficient gait, one with less side-to-side motion, came at the cost of the wider hips: Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation, p. 87.
49. Among those that emerged, most likely about 150,000 years ago in East Africa, were the interrelated capacities for language and for abstract thinking: John McWhorter, The Power of Babel (New York: Perennial, 2003), p. 7.
49. Eventually, language and abstract thinking also enabled people to develop something else that’s helpful in challenging circumstances: a sense of humor: Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation, p. 92.
50. By broadcasting such encrypted information through a joke: Thomas Flamson and H. Clark Barrett, “The Encryption Theory of Humor: a Knowledge-Based Mechanism of Honest Signaling,” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 6(2008)4, pp. 261–262.
51. Modern medical studies suggest that experiencing humor may yield a wide range of health benefits: Dean Mobbs, Michael D. Greicius, et al., “Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Reward Centers,” Neuron, Vol. 40 (December 4, 2003), p. 1041.
51. He just had an arrow escape: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 408.
51. We experience humor when, under certain circumstances, the temporal-occipital junction: Mobbs, Greicius, et al., “Humor Modulates,” p. 1045.
52. Alternatively, if our brain identifies the correct answer: Vinod Goel and Raymond J. Dolan, “The functional anatomy of humor: segregating cognitive and affective components,” Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 4, No. 3 (March 2001), pp. 237–38.
52–53. We actually use different neural pathways to process puns: Goel and Dolan, “The functional anatomy of humor,” pp. 237–238.
CHAPTER 3
56. A pun is primâ facie an insult to the person you are talking with: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (Boston: The Riverside Press, 1858), p. 17.
56. They amuse themselves and other children: Holmes, The Autocrat, p. 16.
56. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued: Holmes, The Autocrat, p. 17.
57. I think you must not understand that to use this pun would destroy the magazine: Daniel Menaker, A Good Talk (New York and Boston: Twelve, 2010), p. 172.
57. Many other prominent writers and thinkers have similarly decried them: Kenneth Muir, The Singularity of Shakespeare and Other Essays (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1977), p. 20.
57. I would rather it should be from the paw of the lion than from the hoof of an ass: Joseph Addison, The Spectator, No. 61 (London, May 10, 1711).
59. It had verbs of ten types, nouns of three genders, and a complexity of endings: Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (Perennial, New York, 2001), pp. 50–51.
60. In official matters, both written and spoken, English was history: Bryson, The Mother Tongue, p. 54.
60. Meanwhile, as Normans began to intermarry with Englishspeakers: Bryson, The Mother Tongue, pp. 55–57.
61. The resulting pandemic, known as the Black Death, killed off a third of Europe’s population: Joseph M. Williams, Origins of the English Language: A Social and Linguistic History (New York: The Free Press, 1975), p. 69.
62. Meanwhile, a renewed interest in classical literature: Williams, Origins of the English Language, p. 92.
62. I am of this opinion that our own tung shold be written cleane and pure: Williams, Origins of the English Language, p. 88.
62. Clergymen punned in the pulpit: William Mathews, LLD, Wit and Humor: Their Use and Abuse (Chicago: S.C. Griggs and Company, 1888), p. 234.
63. Such wordplay quickly became, according to Shakespeare scholar Hëlge Kökeritz, as much a part of sophisticated conversation as it was a stock ingredient of contemporary comedy: Hëlge Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s Pronunciation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), pp. 54–55.
63. Shakespeare’s penchant for punning, Kökeritz wrote, reflects the spirit of the age: Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s Pronunciation, p. 55.
63. Fundamentally, though, Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights punned because puns helped engage and entertain audiences: Frankie Rubinstein, A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and Their Significance (London: The MacMillan Press, 1989), p. x.
64. The genius of the language encouraged them: Frank P. Wilson, “Shakespeare and the Diction of Common Life,” Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 27, 1941.
64. It all sounds innocent enough, but as Frankie Rubinstein notes in A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and Their Significance, audiences of the time would have caught what were then obvious double entendres: Rubinstein, A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns, p. xi.
64. With this in mind, Kökeritz, a noted scholar of archaic English pronunciation, has suggested that perhaps as many as half of Shakespeare’s homophonic puns have been lost: Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s Pronunciation, p. 62.
64. In the second act of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth describes how she will incriminate the innocent: Muir, The Singularity of Shakespeare, p. 22.
65. According to historical accounts, the poem was put to music: Alexander M. Witherspoon and Frank J. Warnke, Seventeenth-Century Prose and Poetry, Second Edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.), p. 759.
66. Well-constructed riddles are attractive for the same reason: Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, Book III (London: Penguin Books, 2004), p. 239.
66. Equivocal sayings are esteemed as being of the wittiest kind: Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore, Book 2 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1847), pp. 196, 211.
66. Conceding that puns are more usually praised for their ingenuity than for their humor: Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (New York: Penguin Books, translated 1967), p. 167.
67. Traveling entertainers, especially, were commonly viewed as vagabonds, tricksters or parasites: Anton C. Zijderveld, Reality in a Looking-Glass (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 51, 149, 102.
67. In return for his loyal service, Armstrong was eventually rewarded: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Vol. II (New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica), pp. 590–591.
68. Great praise be given to God and little laud to the Devil: Encyclopaedia Britannica, p. 590.
68. In 1637, he finally persuaded the king to oust Armstrong: Encyclopaedia Britannica, p. 591.
68. Laud had Prynne locked up in the Tower of London: Ethyn Williams Kirby, William Prynne: A Study in Puritanism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), p. 28.
69. But when tipped on its side, the C looked just like the pope’s head: Kirby, William Prynne, p. 39.
69. According to one account, the sentence was carried out to the very letter of the law: Kirby, William Prynne, pp. 43–45.
69. Half English, half Latin, it played off of the double meaning of Stigmata Laudis: Kirby, William Prynne, p. 45.
71. Only a decade later, there were eighty-two such establishments in the city: Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, Vol. 1, Markman Ellis, ed. (London: Pickering & Chato, 2006), pp. xxvi–xxvii.
72. His sentence included, among other punishments, immersion in coffee: Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, p. 35.
72. Yes sir with all my heart, a bystander answered the chaplain: Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, pp. 136–137.
72. The king, taken aback by the brewing rebellion, had quickly capitulated: Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, pp. 95–96.
73. Lloyd’s became the place for maritime news and shipping insurance: John Timbs, Curiosities of London: Exhibiting the Rare and Remarkable Objects of Interest in the Metropolis, A New Edition, Corrected and Enlarged (London: David Bogue, 1868), pp. 266–267.
73. You are like a waterman; you look one way, and Rowe another: Mathews, Wit and Humor, p. 236.
74. He often invented new words and played word games with his fellow London wits: Carole Fabricant, Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal and Other Writings (London: Penguin Books, 2009), p. xxxiv.
75. Me as a lover?: C. C. Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1874), p. 169.
75. Lie snug, and hear what critics say: Timbs, Curiosities of London, p. 205.
76. They aimed, he wrote, to reduce language to its simplest terms: Richard F. Jones, “Science and Language in England of the Mid-Seventeenth Century,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology (University of Illinois Press, July 1932), pp. 319–320.
76. More than any other linguistic defect, scientists objected to a word’s possessing many meanings: Jones, “Science and Language,” p. 326.
76. Physician and philosopher John Locke suggested that the study of mathematics helped free the mind: Margreta De Grazia, “The Secularization of Language in the Seventeenth Century,” in Language and the History of Thought, Vol. XIII (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1995), p. 19.
76. Not only did many seventeenth-century thinkers begin to question the authority of the Hebrew alphabet: De Grazia, “The Secularization of Language,” p. 25.
77. According to Alderson, this hierarchy was adjusted: Simon J. Alderson, “The Augustan Attack on the Pun,” Eighteenth-Century Life, Vol. 20, Issue 3 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 3.
77. By 1600, in fact, about half of England’s urban population could read and write: Melvyn Bragg, “The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language” (London: Sceptre, 2003), p. 130.
77. There are only some few Footsteps of it in the Country: Alderson, “The Augustan Attack,” p. 4.
78. Not too many years earlier, political opponents had publicly ridiculed his favorite coffeehouse: Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, p. 199.
78. In 1711, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele launched The Spectator: Addison, The Spectator, No. 10 (London, March 12, 1711).
78. The pun, he asserted, had finally been entirely banished: Addison, The Spectator, No. 61 (London, May 10, 1711).
78. In an anonymous 1714 satirical pamphlet: God’s Revenge Against Punning, 1714 (London).
79. This does occasion the corruption of our language: God’s Revenge Against Punning.
79. Despite such antipathy toward puns: God’s Revenge Against Punning.
79. Rather, it was absurd, mocking and brilliant at once: For a fascinating explanation of his more obscure yet brilliant puns, see the footnotes corresponding to Swift’s essay in Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal and Other Writings (London: Penguin Books, 2009), pp. 329–331.
80. The antient [sic] Romans very well understood the Difference: Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal, p. 94.
80. Building his argument with pun after pun, Swift: Swift, A Modest Proposal, p. 94.
80. A punner must be a man of the greatest natural abilities: ARS PUNICA, SIVE FLOS LINGUARUM. THE ART OF PUNNING; OR, THE FLOWER OF LANGUAGES: IN SEVENTY-NINE RULES; FOR THE FURTHER IMPROVEMENT OF CONVERSATION, AND HELP OF MEMORY, as printed in The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Second Edition, Vol. XIII (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1824), pp. 390–391.
80. Included was the case of Ptolemaeus Philopunnaeus: ARS PUN-ICA, p. 392.
81. Pan being the god of universal nature: ARS PUNICA, p. 392.
81. Like punsters of all ages, the essay’s author: ARS PUNICA, p. 409.
81. Punning is a virtue: ARS PUNICA, p. 409.
82. Indeed, when the coffeehouses first opened: Tea & Coffee in the Age of Dr. Johnson, edited by Stephanie Pickford (London: Dr. Johnson’s House Trust, 2008), pp. 17–18.
83. And as a new national network of turnpikes began spreading: Paul Langford, Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 65.
83. Early in the eighteenth century, as one scholar has written, verbal refinement was disregarded: Dorothy Marshall, “Manners, Meals and Domestic Pastimes,” in Johnson’s England, Vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 336.
84. True wit, or sense, never made anybody laugh: W. Ernst, Memoirs of the Life of Philip Dormer, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1893), p. 343.
84. Given this attitude it’s no surprise that Lord Chesterfield looked down on puns: The Earl of Carnarvon, Letters of Philip Dormer, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, to His Godson and Successor, Edited from the Originals, with a Memoir of Lord Chesterfield (New York: MacMillan and Company, 1889), p. xlii.
84. When the punning playwright William Wycherley defended punning: Alderson, “The Augustan Attack,” p. 9.
85. In an age when strict libel laws continued to proscribe a good deal of political speech: Langford, Eighteenth-Century Britain, pp. 20–21.
85. In 1742, when the classical scholar Elizabeth Carter drafted a proposal: Juliet Feibel, “Elizabeth Carter’s Self-Pun-ishment,” Lewd and Notorious: Female Transgression in the Eighteenth Century (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2003), p. 69.
86. In recruiting financial backers: See preceding note.
87. What had taken Johnson nearly a decade to compile: Henry Hitchings, Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson’s Dictionary (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), p. 6.
87. As Johnson biographer Henry Hitchings has written, the dictionary would become an instrument of cultural imperialism: Hitchings, Defining the World, p. 5.
88. Today it might be hard to imagine the editor of a dictionary as a celebrity: Hitchings, Defining the World, p. 225.
88. He who would violate the sanctities of his Mother Tongue: Richard Lederer, Get Thee to a Punnery (Layton, UT: Wyrick & Company, 2006), p. 4.
89. “Well,” a satisfied Johnson replied: Bernard Blackmantle, The Punster’s Pocket-Book or The Art of Punning (London: Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, 1826), p. 106.
90. And when the prominent Boston clergyman Mather Byles: The Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. 13, Frederick Converse Beach and George Edwin Rines, eds. (New York and Chicago: The Americana Company, 1904).
90. Many Native Americans, including those whom early colonists encountered, were adept punsters: Martha Champion Randle, “The Waugh Collection of Iroquois Folktales,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 97, No. 3 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1953), p. 626.
90. The nicknames they gave to newcomers such as William Penn: William N. Fenton, “He-Lost-a-Bet (Howan’neyao) of the Seneca Clan,” from Strangers to Relatives: the Adoption and Naming of Anthropologists in North America (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), p. 81.
90. Penn was dubbed Onas: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, This Country of Ours: The Story of the United States (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1917), Chapter 40.
91. If English had been dammed up at home: H. L. Mencken, The American Language (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), p. 183.
92. Boys, it concluded, should be prohibited from punning: Loomis, “Traditional American Word Play,” p. 2.
93. Having vented, Mann proposed a truce: Horace Mann’s Letters on The Extension of Slavery into California and New Mexico and on the Duty of Congress to Provide the Trial by Jury for Alleged Fugitive Slaves, in From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824–1909 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress), p. 7.
93. There is scarcely a festive gathering: “The Philosophy of Punning,” Putnam’s Monthly—A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art, Vol. VII (February 1856), pp. 164–165.
94. Our puns are protests against the trite and the prolix: “The Philosophy of Punning,” p. 165.
94. Most likely, in an urbanizing society, corny might have been a derogative way to describe the humor of farmers: Jacobs, The Eaten Word, p. 54.
94. Alternatively, the British lexicographer Eric Partridge noted in his 1937 dictionary of slang: Partridge, Dictionary of Slang, p. 181.1.
95. But in the 1850s, calling something cheesy meant that it was in fashion, correct, showy, or fine: Partridge, Dictionary of Slang, pp. 144–145.
95. Citing the pun’s classical roots and illustrious past: Mathews, Wit and Humor, p. 226.
95. While conceding that the professional punster who lies in wait for easy prey is a cold-blooded, hardened wretch: Mathews, Wit and Humor, p. 262.
95. Why it should provoke such hostility when legitimately employed, is an enigma hard to explain: Partridge, Dictionary of Slang, pp. 144–45.
95. Words are often not only the vehicle of thought: William Mathews, Words: Their Use and Abuse (Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Company, 1896), p. 82.
96. One biblical pun that Casanowicz identifies appears in Job: Immanuel Moses Casanowicz, Paronomasia In The Old Testament (Breinigsville, PA: Kessinger Publishing, 2009, reprint), p. 43.
97. In a similar spirit, scholars who followed Casanowicz have discovered that the Book of Job: Web site of Scott B. Noegel, Professor of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, citing publication of “Janus Parallelism in the Book of Job,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement, Vol. 225 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).
97. Given the frequency and richness of biblical puns: Eliezer Segal, History, Holidays and Halakhah (Northvale, NJ, and Jerusalem: J. Aronson, 2000), pp. 116–117.
97. Playing off the letters of his name, they endowed him with a punning nickname: Jona Lendering, “Wars between the Jews and Romans: Simon ben Kosiba (130–136 CE),” from
LIVIUS,
Articles on Ancient History,
http://www.livius.org/, pp. 2–3.
97. Ultimately, though, the Romans finally cornered and defeated Simon ben Kosiba: Lendering, “Wars between the Jews and Romans, p. 5.
98. These were humorous, often punning parodies of Talmudic scholarship: Web site of Scott B. Noegel, citing “Janus Parallelism in the Book of Job.”
102. According to laughter researcher Robert Provine, studies have shown that laughter doesn’t equal humor: Author interview with Robert R. Provine, April 7, 2010.
102. Provine argues that this common misperception has been unduly influenced: Author interview with Robert R. Provine, April 7, 2010.
103. Puns are good, bad, and indifferent: Henry Fowler, Modern English Usage (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 474.
103. The rapper André 3000, of OutKast, explained his decision to get married with the following verse: Sasha Frere-Jones, “Put Your Left Foot In,” The New Yorker (August 2, 2010), p. 75.
105. Studies also indicate that children’s facility with language has a major impact on their ability to excel: David Crystal, How Language Works, p. 479.
105. Mississippi said to Missouri: Susan Stewart, Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 162.
106. In Headless Body in Topless Bar, a collection of New York Post headlines: The Staff of New York Post, Headless Body in Topless Bar: The Best Headlines from America’s Favorite Newspaper (New York: HarperEntertainment, 2007), p. viii.
107. Even William Shakespeare couldn’t get his puns past our copy desk: Joe Lapointe, author interview, November 17, 2009.
107. OFFICER, THAT’S NOT JAZZ, I SAY, IT’S FELONIOUS JUNK!: The New York Times, December 13, 2009. p. WK3
108. A 2004 study by Dutch researchers found that consumers actually preferred punning product slogans: Margot van Mulken, Renske van Enchot-van Dijk and Hans Hoeken, “Puns, Relevance and Appreciation in Advertisements,” Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 37, Issue 5 (May 2005), pp. 715–716.
109. Sociologists at Central Michigan University who actually studied the pun-related groan: Bernard N. Meltzer and William J. Meltzer, “Responding to Verbal Ambiguity: The Case of Puns,” Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Norman K. Denzin, Editor (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group, 2008), p. 154.
110. Comedian Gilbert Gottfried suggests that some people groan to demonstrate their superiority: Gilbert Gottfried, author interview, July 19, 2010.
110. Michael Barrie, a comedy writer who has collaborated with everyone: Michael Barrie, author interview, July 29, 2010.
110. As the retired Borscht Belt comedian and actor Mickey Freeman explains: Mickey Freeman, author interview, July 8, 2010.
111. The pun-off is the one time of the year in which you can expect true appreciation: Gary Hallock, author interview, May 11, 2010.
112. In the days of Vaudeville, according to comedy writer, director and producer Alan Kirschenbaum: Alan Kirschenbaum, author interview, July 10, 2010.
CHAPTER 4
117. According to the Kumulipo, the sacred Hawaiian Song of Creation: Martha Warren Beckwith, The Kumulipo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 1.
118. As the late anthropologist Martha Beckwith wrote of the Kumulipo: Beckwith, The Kumulipo, pp. 38–39.
118. In extreme cases, losers even paid with their lives: Martha Beckwith, Hawaiian Mythology (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1970), p. 455.
119. One by one, the nine doubters squared off against Kalapana: Beckwith, Hawaiian Mythology, pp. 458–459.
119–20. Even today, such punning is found around the globe: Joel Sherzer, Speech Play and Verbal Art (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), p. 35.
120. Oral poetry duels at traditional Palestinian weddings: Nadia G. Yaqub, Pens, swords, and the springs of art: the oral poetry dueling of Palestinian weddings in Galilee (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), p. 259.
120. Receiving a string of eight cowries in return would be a welcome reply: David R. Olson, The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 100.
120. According to Maya legend, all people originally spoke the same language: Peter Farb, Word Play: What Happens When People Talk (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), p. 111.
121. According to anthropologist Gary Gossen, a young Chamulan man might challenge another to match wits: Gary H. Gossen, “Chamula Totzil Proverbs: Neither Fish Nor Fowl,” from Meaning in Mayan Languages, Munro Edmonson, Editor (1973 Ethnolinguistic Studies), pp. 220–221.
121. Alternatively, the original target may also answer the verbal challenge: Farb, Word Play, p. 111.
121. Some of these k’ehel k’op duels can last for hundreds of exchanges: Gossen, “Chamula Totzil Proverbs,” pp. 226–229.
121. Not all k’ehel k’op duels feature puns: Gossen, “Chamula Totzil Proverbs,” p. 227.
122. To date, linguists have cataloged some 6,809 languages: Stephen R. Anderson,
How Many Languages Are There in the World? (Washington, D.C.: Linguistic Society of America, undated), pp. 1–2,
http://www.lsadc.org/info/pdf_files/howmany.pdf/.
122. As the late anthropologist and linguist Peter Farb wrote in Word Play: Farb, Word Play, p. 318.
122. No matter what language we speak, Farb wrote, we follow rules: See preceding note.
123–24. Patterns of hominid migration about 900,000 years ago: Steven Roger Fischer, A History of Language (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), pp. 38–39.
124. By half a million years ago, groups of spear-throwing hunters in what is now England: Fischer, A History of Language, p. 42.
124. But it was not until about 150,000 years ago that people reached: Fischer, A History of Language, p. 51.
124. It was about this time, some 35,000 years ago: Hammond and Hughes, Upon the Pun, Chapter 9.
125. Genesis recounts that, in the wake of the Great Flood: King James Bible, Book of Genesis, Chapter 11, Verse 7 (New York: Meridian, 1974), p. 16.
126. We regard a stone whose shape or colouring reminds us of some other object: Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon, pp. 167–168.
126. In answering riddles or divining the meaning of various signs: Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon, pp. 168–69.
127. The Sumerian scribes’ next conceptual breakthrough: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), p. 220.
127. For instance, Diamond notes that it is easy to draw an arrow: Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon, pp 168–69.
128. As a Sumerian scribe summed up the challenge: Fischer, A History of Language, p. 86.
129. The idea of wordplay is there right from the beginning: Richard B. Parkinson, author interview, June 18, 2010.
129. To those who can read the original hieroglyphs: Richard B. Parkinson, Poetry and Culture in Middle Kingdom Egypt: A Dark Side to Perfection (London: Continuum, 2002), p. 143.
130. Comparing this with its corresponding word in ancient Greek, scholars translated it as “go forth”: Richard B. Parkinson, Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment (London: British Museum Press, 1999), p. 80.
130. Apparently an homage to Sobek, the crocodile god: Richard B. Parkinson, e-mail message to author, May 19, 2010.
130. But Parkinson concedes, with frustration: Richard Parkinson, author interview, June 18, 2010.
131. From it emerged many diverse alphabets: Oxford Companion, p. 30.
132. “At the end of this process,” wrote Steven Fischer: Fischer, A History of Language, p. 99.
132. Writing marched together with weapons: Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, p. 216.
CHAPTER 5
137. In Nazi Germany, a certain species of black humor arose called Flüsterwitze: Egon Larson, Wit As a Weapon (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1980), pp. 53–55.
139. Your country needs LERTS: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 408.
139. Recognizing the power of language to subvert authority, George Orwell added a long appendix to his novel 1984 explaining the creation of Newspeak: George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Plume, 1983), p. 309.
139. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning: Orwell, 1984, p. 310.
140. I think punning is a code for talking about what is socially awkward or difficult: Gary Gossen, author interview, August 12, 2010.
140. The more rigid the rules of social class: Orwell, 1984, p. 310.
141. Long fearful of an unconstrained monarchy: Mathews, Wit and Humor, p. 238.
141. One should strive at once to be devoted to the Absolute Self: Lee Siegel, Laughing Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 382.
142. The puns that free language free the man: Hammond and Hughes, Upon the Pun, Chapter 16.
142. There was a man in a house and he could not get out: Hammond and Hughes, Upon the Pun, Chapter 16.
144. Creativity requires flexible examination of the connections among ideas: Encyclopedia of Creativity, Vol. 1, Mark A. Runco and Steven R. Pritzker, Editors-in-Chief (San Diego and London: Academic Press, 1999), p. 852.
144. Arthur Koestler, in his seminal Act of Creation, wrote that punning requires regression: Koestler, The Act of Creation, pp. 316–317.
145. The prerequisite of originality, Koestler wrote, is the art of forgetting: Koestler, The Act of Creation, p. 190.
145. The seeds of Punning are in the minds of all men: Lederer, Get Thee to a Punnery, p. 5.
146. Why did the barmaid champagne? Because the stout porter bitter: Samuel Beckett, Murphy (New York: Grove Press, 1957), p. 139.
147. A generation later, the Italian Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo canvassed the visual pun’s possibilities: Eli Kince, Visual Puns in Design (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, a division of Billboard Publications, Inc., 1982), pp. 15–17.
148. Most of the complicated systems we see in the world, writes Steven Pinker, are blending systems: Pinker, The Language Instinct, p. 85.
149. Research has suggested that the single most important predictor of intelligence: The New York Times Book of Language, p. 101.
150. As the late neurologist Max Levin theorized: Walter Redfern, Puns (New York: Basis Blackwell Inc., 1985), p. 148.
150. Responding in classical Greek, Porson said: The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, Part I (London: Henry Colburn, 1827), p. 272.
151. Good advocates make their points not just by facts, but by the tools of language: Stephen Gilchrist, author interview, London, June 11, 2010.