Paronomasia (pa-ro-no-ma’-si-a): Using words that sound alike but that differ in meaning (punning).
I was going toward the best time of my life. I had won the lotto—$22,000,000,000. That’s a lot of money. Small countries were lining up asking for help paying off their national debts. I told them all no. Why not ask to be annexed by a wealthy first-world country, like China or Germany?
I was headed to “Peter Punster’s Prudent Puns.” It was a school in Newton, New Jersey offering a one-year course of studies in punning, opening doors to the future as comics or pains in the ass. I didn’t know whether I wanted to be a pain in ass the or a comic. I was already a pain in the ass, so I guess I’d become a comic.
Our first day of class we were regaled by Mr. Punster’s nearly non-stop punning: “I’m addicted to brake fluid, but it’s OK because I can stop at any time; What do you call an alligator in a vest? An investigator; What did one eye say to the other? Just between you and me, something smells; I can’t stand Russian dolls. They’re so full of themselves; Why couldn’t the pony sing in the choir? He was a little horse.”
This is just a sample. I felt like yelling fraud. Every one of Mr. Punster’s puns were taken from the internet, from Will Styler’s “A Collection of Terrible Puns.” I went directly to Mr. Punster and told him what I knew. He pulled a pistol out of his desk—it was a flintlock! He told me to go stand in the corner. He asked: “What’s black and white and stands in the corner?” I said I didn’t know. He said “A naughty Panda.” Then, he pointed at his desk and asked: “Why did Arthur have a round table? So nobody could corner him!”
What the hell was going on here? He told me to shut up and not tell anybody what I had discovered, and he would let me live. I agreed to keep my mouth shut: “No word of mouth, just mouth.” Mr. Punster slapped my face and said “That sucked more than a Hoover.”
On our second day of class we made lists of potential pun words: similar words and similar-sounding words with different meanings. The first one I thought of was gun: gun an engine and a gun you shoot people with, and then court: basketball court, legal court, and courting your girlfriend. I thought of about 50 and couldn’t make a pun out of any of them. That’s when I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a punster. So, I dropped out.
At lunch assembly, I got up on stage and announced that Mr, Punster was a fraud—that he couldn’t pun his way out of a wet noodle. That did it. He pulled out his gun and took aim at me. He pulled the trigger and the flintlock made a popping sound and a lead ball rolled out of the barrel. As he tried to quiet the panicked students, I ran out of the lunchroom door, hopped on my motorcycle and went back to being a normal person.
Have you ever wanted to be something, but didn’t have the skill or ability to be it? I pulled up my pants and said to myself: “If you can’t make it, criticize it.” I decided how being a critic may be just the thing for me. I could channel my anger through other peoples’ literary efforts—offering completely unbalanced readings of their works. No positive side. I’m calling myself “Blackie Spite.” I have a blog called “Ripping You A New One.” I have 500,000 followers who revel in my tasteless bashing of everything I read.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 