pun
/pʌn/ verb, noun, proper noun
Also a form of bun
Forms puns punning punned pund
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To beat; strike with force; to ram; to pound, as in a mortar; reduce to powder, to pulverize.
- verb (intransitive) To make or tell a pun; to make a play on words. “We punned about the topic until all around us groaned.”
- noun A joke or type of wordplay in which similar definitions or sounds of two words or phrases, or different definitions of the same word, are deliberately confused. “The pun is the lowest form of wit.”
- noun (India, historical) A certain number of cowries, generally 80.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English ponnen, ponen, punen, from Old English punian, pūnian (“to pound, beat, bray, bruise, crush, grind”), from Proto-Germanic *punōną (“to break to pieces, pulverize”). See pound. As a kind of word play, from the notion of “beating” the words into place.
From Hindi [Term?].
From the McCune-Reischauer romanization of Korean 분 (bun), from Chinese 分 (“fen”).
Webster’s 1913
- verb To pound. [Obs.]
- noun A play on words which have the same sound but different meanings; an expression in which two different applications of a word present an odd or ludicrous idea; a kind of quibble or equivocation.
- verb To make puns, or a pun; to use a word in a double sense, especially when the contrast of ideas is ludicrous; to play upon words; to quibble. Dryden.
- verb To persuade or affect by a pun. Addison.
Etymology [See Pound to beat.]
Etymology [Cf. Pun to pound, Pound to beat.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “pun”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details