Years ago (college days) a friend told me there was only one pun composed of three separate words in a row, each of which was a homonym. Here's how it goes:
With part of their inheritance, three brothers bought a ranch. Their father (who had given them some of it, though not all - his name wasn't Lear), came on a visit, and asked them what they had decided to call it.
"Focus," said the eldest.
"Why?" asked Dad.
"Because that's where the sons raise meat." was the reply.
I have toyed with this idea for years, but have never been able to come up with something at all, let alone anything quite so neat. Do any of you know better? Or can you invent one that works? Anyone up for a four-in-pun?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
There was a construction worker whose name was Jack. His latest contract was to move a house from one lot to another
one, a few streets ahead. He was just starting to explain to the owner how he would be lifting the house to get it on the trailer, when his wife called out, "Yoo-hoo Jack".
Shanks:
Believe it or not, when I saw the name of your thread I knew what the pun was!!
Isaac Asimov, who was an inveterate punster, said this was the most perfect example of a pun in the English language. I don not recall, but something in the back of my mind tells me he devised it.
And I read Jackie's post infra and I will admit openly that if there's a triple pun there I do not get it. At all.
I like the sons-raise-meat triple pun, but the gloss went off it later when I was thinking about the expression "raise meat". I don't think farmers do that at all - they raise animals for their meat. Makes the pun just a little strained.
I had the same initial reaction as you, TEd, about Jackie's pun, but I think it just about qualifies if you allow "yoo hoo" to be two separate words. In one sense she is yoo-hooing to her husband Jack, and in the other she is calling out "[Hey!] You who jack [houses]!". Or something like that.
There's the old one about the girl looking forward to her wedding day. What was she thinking?
Aisle, altar, hymn.
>Anyone up for a four-in-pun?
OK, he says, rolling up his sleeves and hunching over his typewriter...
In 1968, the northern Punjab was in the grip of a severe drought. For months, temperatures had hovered around 40C. The rivers and dams had all dried up, crops had failed and things were looking really grim.
In desperation the local government called Sir Sunil Gupta, known primarily for his spice empire, but also making a name for himself as a driller for subterranean water. They hoped that he would be able to provide a reliable source of water to last for generations. Sir Sunil duly arrived with his team and drilling rig, but the high temperatures led to repeated equipment failure. After some weeks of frustration, there was an unseasonally cold snap one evening which allowed him to made good headway.
The next morning the local newspaper proclaimed:
CHILI KNIGHT AUGERS WELL FOR THE FUTURE.
(Did that sound too Jazzoctopesque?)
Marty
You take the palm! I think (though I might never be able to remember it well enough to repeat it), that this is the best shaggy-dog pun-ending story yet. Nice work.
Regarding Jackie's work, I'm beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as a "U-hu" jack that is used in construction. Where is the Queen of the Gutter when you need her?
>You take the palm! I think
I told this one before, but not in a contest for a palm.
When I was in Europe on a cycling adventure, I found myself at Dover on a Sunday evening, booked on the ferry to Ostende. The trip was very rough and I became quite seasick, but recovered in the beautiful daylight of a crisp fall day. Rejoicing, I sent a cable to my father: Sick transit, glorious Monday.
Not only is it a fourplex pun, but it's bilingual as well. Or does bilingual mean speaking with a forked tongue??
Sister Angeletta was the nicest teacher in the whole school.
Besides her classroom duties, she coached the baseball team.
This was ideal for her, as she had an unusually deep voice that carried well into the outfield. When the catcher asked her to stitch up the hole in home plate, there was
none so bass.
Jackie, I think you're getting there - at least you have three working homophones in a row. It's possible, however, that the syntax may have to improve so that 'nun sew base' begins to sound more correct. I suspect you will soon have that sorted.
TEd, I like the fourplex pun, particularly given the bilingual approach. But isn't it gloria in the Latin? Notice how the dark and stormy night (oops, chilly night) relied upon perfect homophones, as did the original ranch story.
I tell you what, even if we don't yet award you two the palms, I certainly think half a palm each is warranted. (What is the sound of half a palm flapping?
) I certainly have never been able to do as well as you have...
>But isn't it gloria in the Latin?
If all else fails, read the rules! I will amend my submission as follows:
Gloria was the one who was traveling. Her cable home read, Sick Transit. Gloria, Monday.
>CHILI KNIGHT AUGERS WELL FOR THE FUTURE.
(Did that sound too Jazzoctopesque?)
Nope, just too deep for me :)
Gloria was the one who was traveling. Her cable home read, Sick Transit. Gloria, Monday.If you can tell me which part of England Gloria came from, the palm is yours!
[sneaky emoticon]
sic transit gloria mundi
The way I first heard it it was Gloria Mundy and she got a special one word rate for using a foreign language phrase.
My contribution would be "Nun wrecks some," said Kaiser. The telegraphic syntax would require it to be a newspaper headline and I haven't built up any kind of back story for it. It strains the homophonic rule a little but I feel I should get some credit for a 5-in-pun.
In reply to:
Gloria in the Latin
I was told that
Sic transit gloria mundi meant, "Gloria Munday threw up on the streetcar."
Faldage:
That's not good, that's great. I can see the musical now.
And I handed my pun ball crown to him.
While this doesn't fit the rules because it is not consecutive homophones, I suspect you will like it:
Poor Doctor Berade. Prior to his untimely death he had made history by breeding a strain of swine that averaged over a ton in weight. On top of being huge, they were extremely efficient, since all they did was lie around all day and turn otherwise useless food into high-quality protein. There were, though, two negaitves. First, the genetic dice had rolled amiss, and these animals had the absolutely worst breath in the world. So bad, in fact, that no one could approach them unless they were stuffed with breath mints. Further, they were so big that humans couldn't handle them, so Doctor Berade had cloned dozens of gorillas who were specially trained to clean and care for the porcine giants. One day Doctor Berade apparently became upset when one of the gorillas dropped a whole bowl of the breath mints; he made the fatal mistake of hitting the gorilla in the presence of more than 75 of the gorilla's compatriots. The police report concluded: Seventy six strong clones fed the pig Berade, with a hundred and ten clorets close at hand.
off thread-- you punsters are wonderful, and these are beyond my skill--
but isn't {green]Sic transit gloria mundi
sick of commuting, happy till monday for those whom mind using TGIF?
In reply to:
Dr. Berade
WOW! That takes the palm, the cake, whatever.
While on this subject, while driving to lunch there popped into my mind, apropos of nothing, one of the great classic triple puns of Western civilization: Groucho Marx, as Capt. Spalding, in Animal Crackers remarked that the best place to hunt elephants is in Alabama, "because the Tuscaloosa." (For the benefit of uitländer, Tuscaloosa is a city in Alabama). Lovers of puns have a ball with the Marx brothers.
>>CHILI KNIGHT AUGERS WELL FOR THE FUTURE.
(Did that sound too Jazzoctopesque?).
>Nope, just too deep for me :)
Or too boring?
Having belatedly caught up with this thread, I offer the following (with suitable apologies to Terry Pratchett!)
It is a well-known fact on the Slipped Disc World that the Fifth Elephant was responsible for the world’s best deep fat mines. Without these valuable reserves the monastical deep-fat friars would have long ago had their chips. A lesser-known fact is that, as a close cousin of the Hairy Mammoth of A’tuin, the Fifth Elephant also bequeathed us our leading reserves of hair. Not just ordinary hair, of course: high quality carbon fibre. With the proliferation of the weird wild wubberyuh (more commonly referred to as the interknot revolution) the demand for endless threads seems… well, endless.
Faced with such demands, leading Swiss scientist Herr Werner Suigeneris mounted an exploratory expedition to scalp fresh supplies at source. Deep in the forests of Awadia he encountered a dwarf, who was distinguished by his extraordinary wig of long, flowing black hair. Werner’s smoky grey eyes lit up at this clue. “Can you show me more of this hair, my little fellow?” he asked.
The longitudinally-challenged one drew himself up to Werner’s knees, and spluttered his reply: “I am not your little fellow… I am the biggest in my family… How dare you offer me such a low insult…”
Werner was quick to apologise having intended no slight. “Sorry, please calm down…” “Down? Down!!” shouted the dwarf. Werner tried again: “I am so sorry, I meant no offence at all…” “TALL?” squealed the dwarf, “are you taking the piss?”
“No, no”, replied Werner hastily. “Ah, look, I have gold to pay for suitable long threads, if you are interested.” And the dwarf’s eyes widened at the glint of his favourite metal. “Why didn’t you say so?” he said, suddenly cheerful. “I’ve got loads of hair – my nearest mine is just over here.”
Werner followed the dwarf into a large cavern. Sure enough the back wall was a hairface – but when Werner sampled it, the filaments were very short fragments. “Yes, very nice”, he said, “but these are too – ah - do you have any, ah, longer hair?”, he asked carefully. “Certainly!” said the dwarf. “I’ll show you my number two mine, over here”.
Following into a deeper cavern, Werner again saw a hairline deposit. Again the threads were too short. “I am sorry,” he said to the dwarf, “I cannot buy this length either.” The dwarf replied: “No problem in the slightest. I have plenty more mines to show you.”
So Werner followed the dwarf into mineshaft after mineshaft until they got to the eighth working. “This is getting more like it!” exclaimed Werner, examining a very long thread. “Is this the best you have available?” The dwarf looked carefully through narrowed eyes, and said: “This is the best I have for sale.” Werner looked at him sharply, saying: “Do you mean you do have some better material?” “Well…” said the dwarf slowly, “I do have some of the best hair ever dug out. But I don’t really want to sell it…”
Werner, with the Swiss nose for a deal, could feel a tension in the air. “OK, OK…. But just show me, out of interest, will you? They say the French stuff is the best on the market”, he added slyly.
“French – pah!” snorted the dwarf derisively. “Come down here and tell me this isn’t the very best hair you’ve ever seen.” He stepped proudly aside at the bottom of the last mineshaft, to reveal to Werner’s incredulous gaze the most apparently endless deposit of hair ever discovered which ran in a lustrous seam about 8.3 metres deep.
He turned back to the dwarf, and said simply “Name your price. I want it ALL, the whole nine yards!”
“Hah!” laughed the dwarf. Then he added the words that passed into dwarf etymology as the first true use of the interrobang, being both a question and an answer:
“You want to buy all of it – Nine Mine hair?!”
Mav
I think that needs a new type of trophy altogether. This is the way it stacks up: JazzO is chief resident etymythologist, and the only person we would trust with whole words; I have decided my forte lies in interpretative etymythology (basically I don't know Latin or French so I make up the translations); you, my friend, are an etymythographer, the Homer of the etymyth, so long us you can make it punny.
Three cheers for our new etymythographer, the laurel wreath and white toga are yours...
BTW: Enigma is certain that all those ety-thingies need to be replaced by eucalyptus.
Shanks suggested: BTW: Enigma is certain that all those ety-thingies need to be replaced by eucalyptus.
And that, of course, may be the answer. Send the whole lot to Oz. They have a lot of desert, and wouldn't even notice an entire spacecraft full of ety-thingies setting up shop replacing themselves with eucalypts. Their creed would, of course, be (bringing threads together) Itzemism. They would raise statues to AEnigma. See TEd, the High Priest of Itzenism, whether he is convinced about Itzenism or not, for the Book of the Word on this new and mysterious system of belief.
I rather like it myself.
CK: Sounds like a combination of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Them!". But fear not, Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, will soon deal with that lot. And in the first innings, too!