PUNS IN ENGLISH | Examples of a Play on Words

hello everyone welcome to today's lesson so this if this is your first time here at interactive English the channels just all about trying to help you guys practice and improve your English skills and please especially if this is your first time write your name in the comments say hello tell me where you're from we love hearing from different people and even if this is your first time and you are with us live in the chat write your name tell me where you're from always love meeting new people so today's lesson is I really like today's lesson it's going to be all about puns so puns I really I say I enjoy today's lesson not only because I think it's it's a little funnier it's because I like lessons where I learn new things so even though I am an English teacher I am constantly nert learning new things about the English language and doing a topic like this and talking about puns I learned some new things and I love doing that and and then I can just go ahead and share it with all of you so I just want to give quick shout out and say hello to lolly dev Daniel Abraham Ibrahim Nisha honey hello so Maya Luisa Aden how are you guys thank you guys for joining me today and this lesson I can tell you well if you don't know what a pun is let me I'll just go ahead and tell you and give you the meaning so a pun is a humorous use of a word or phrase that has several meanings or that sounds like another word and often you would use a pun in when you when you're telling a joke many jokes would have a pun which is why they're funny and we're going to look at some of those today or you may people may just use puns when in everyday conversation sometimes it may be intentional and they tried to use a pun in order to be funny and other times it's it's just on accident and they didn't really mean to do it but it would because of the situation they used a pun so puns are meant to be funny and I can say that this lesson all right this lesson is going to be punny all right that's aya fault I apologize that's just a terrible joke but it is an example that I wanted to give you instead of punny it sounds a little like funny so this is somewhat of a pun it's more of a play on words because this is something else you you hear when talking about puns and it's a play on words or wordplay which is when you're using words in a very creative and imaginative way in order to be funny so I apologize that's a very bad joke but let's I want to get into telling you why why am I doing this so there is a book in case any of you are out there looking for new books to read especially if you love to read in English which is something that I highly recommend this is a book that I have taught English learners before it's called the Phantom Tollbooth and the reason why this book it made me think about doing a lesson like this is because when I've taught this book to other English learners it's it's pretty challenging and the reason why it's very difficult is because this book has so many different puns and wordplay and sometimes as a a person trying to learn another language it can be very difficult to identify that and try to understand well why this might be funny so if you if you really want to challenge yourself if you are interested and really challenge yourself in a way to see if you can identify some of these puns and understand what they mean and why it's funny I recommend this book alright excellent awesome thank you rod for joining the team excellent the other thing I want to point out just to give you an example in this book look at the dog it's a watch dog and that word has two different meanings in English so a watch dog in English is a dog that you may see that is protecting somebody's or its protecting their property it's called a watchdog now it has another meaning a watchdog is also an organization or could be a person that watches over another group to make sure that they are doing what they should be doing to make sure that they're doing their work that okay you're doing what they should be doing this this person or a group is considered a watchdog now in the story that that is the dogs job his job he's watching over this other group of people and making sure that they are doing their work and they are doing what they should be doing so that is a he is a watchdog his job but he is also he's also a dog that has a clock on him a watchdog so it has double meanings like that but that's what made me think of doing this lesson so let's go ahead and talk about some different types of puns now this is where I say I enjoyed learning about this topic because I learn new things because this you don't need to learn the different types of puns the reason why I'm showing it to you is that I hope that it it helps you understand the puns a little bit easier and it helps you understand well why this is funny and why is this a play on words so these are not terms like I did not know this before that there was such as a homophonic pun but it is a type of pun and what this type of pun is it uses homonyms which are words that sound the same but they have different meanings so these are words that sound the same but they have different meanings it is a type of pun let me give you an example so the first one it says frog parking only all others will be towed so I I will ask all of you right now which word do you see that is a homonym all right which of these words is a homonym and I'd use this one because I thought I saw it I thought it was funny but this is a good example of a homonym ik poem where our hominid McClung in which it's using a homonym in order to be funny it's humorous all right frog parking only all others will be towed now the hominem that you see in there is the word toad so if you're thinking about parking instead of saying like toad it would really be toad I'm writing it in there and to tow somebody is to well you you take their car and you move it to another place to tow someone's car so in this case instead of saying toad like you're moving a car it's talking about a toad which is a type of frog it's those those big frogs that is a toad so this is a good example of a hominid mcbomb where's your use a pun in which you're using a homonym and i thought it was kind of funny entertaining the next type of pun is a Hama graphic pun now this is a pun that uses words that are spelled the same but sound different okay a Hama graphic pun the words are spelled the same but they sound different all right so let me give you an example of a Hama graphic pun and I want you to see see if you can identify the word that I'm talking about which makes this a homograph ik pun alright I'm gonna I'm not gonna read it because I don't want to to give it away I want you to read this and which word makes this a homograph ik pun in which the word has two different pronunciations that you can pronounce this word two different ways depending on what you're trying to say all right and that's what makes this funny this is this is a quote it was the name I think of an album by REO Speedwagon back in the late 70s but I think this this may be taken from a quote from a book by Douglas Adams who was a famous author he wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy great book great movie but I think that is where this cover now wait someone who's saying tune alright you guys are kind of right what makes this we're gonna come back to this pun to what makes this a homograph ik pun is not actually tuned and tuna its bass so look at that last word all right you can tuna fish but you can't tuna you you can tune a guitar but you can't tuna fish unless you play it could either be bass or bass so unless you play bass bass is a type of fish alright that is actually that's a picture of a bass right there it's a big fish but it's a type of fish unless you play bass but it's a Hama Hama graphic poem pun because you can also pronounce that word it has the same spelling as bass all right bass is a well it's a type of guitar the bass guitar so you can see in this picture I have a picture of a bass and the bass is playing the bass okay so what bass is a type of fish a bass the same spelling is a type of guitar so that's what makes it a homograph ik pun the first part tune tune a guitar or tuna fish remember those are that is the same pronunciation actually so we're talking about a word that spelled the same but has a different pronunciation this is a tricky one it is a tricky one n right yes so I told you we're gonna come back to this in just a moment and I'll explain it a little more in just a second so let me talk about the next kind of pun that you have is this one is a homonym ik pun now again these are words that I I had no idea that a homonym ik pun existed but hopefully it'll help you understand it a little bit more when I show you the example so this involves a word that is spelled and sounds the same but has a different meaning alright so it involves a word that is spelled and sounds the same it has a different meaning so and I would it involves a word that it doesn't have to be the exact spelling or well let me show you the example and this will obvious so a homonym ik pun and mm okay homonym ik pun words that sound the same spelled and sound the same but has a different meaning okay so here is like a little comic and you see that those in case you don't know those are bullets and it's like you have a little family of bullets and the the person's asking what happened to you and this other bullet over here came home and he says I got fired so in this case the word fired that is what makes this a homonym ik poem it's spelled the same has the same pronunciation but you have these different meanings okay so he got fired like in this case it's like you get fired from your job but also if a bullet you're talking about you you fire a bullet with a gun so the job of a bullet is well typically if you get fired the job is over so the bullet is saying I got fired and he lost his job in that case all right so that's an example of a homonym ik pun and I thought that that was funny so fired is the key word there the next type of pun is a compound pun and this is a pun that contains more than one pun and this is when I said I'm gonna go back to this example because you could say you can tune a guitar but you can't tuna fish that is also a pun that is a homograph ik pun like the first one we did because we're talking about tune something to tune a guitar is to tune it to make sure it sounds right that that the guitar is tuned and tuna fish it is something that well tuna is a type of fish but if you talk about tuna fish it's typically it's a meal it's food it's something you eat so you can tune a guitar but you can't tune a fish that would be a homophonic pun alright it's it sounds the same but these are different words unless you play bass or bass that is the hama graphic pun so because you have two puns in here it's you could also say it's a compound pun you're using more than one pun so that is an example of a compound pun let me show let's do this one a recursive pun so this is another type of pun it requires understanding the first half of the joke in order to understand the second half of the joke I'll give you an example and hopefully this makes sense that a recursive pun you need to have it's almost like you need to understand something in the beginning in order to understand why something else is funny so for example this is a good example so may 4th the date is considered international Star Wars day actually I didn't know that until yesterday until until I look that up yesterday so may May 4th is the date that's considered International Star Wars day and this is a popular this is like a slogan that they would say may the 4th be with you alright now if you have not seen the movie star wars this may not be that funny but if you have seen the movie and you understand that first part of the joke then you somebody might say this and it's funny it's entertaining because instead instead of saying may the 4th be with you in the movie yes on assume says mommy mommy yes instead of 4th in the movie they say force all throughout Star Wars all those they say this throughout I'm writing it may the force be with you all right so force sounds a lot like forth which is why this is funny but if somebody has not seen the movie this is not going to make that much sense and you may not think this is funny so this is an example of a recursive pun that in order to understand why this is funny you need to understand the first part of the joke to begin with alright so this is another type of pun now like I told you you don't need to understand oh well what is a recursive pun what's a Hama Hama Hama graphic pun the reason why I'm showing you that showing you that is that hopefully it helped you understand those jokes a little better because puns are typically something you see in writing I think it's common so let's look at some more examples but first I did want to talk about some expressions using the word pun so I think a more common one somebody might say no pun intended and when somebody says no pun intended it means that they're going to use a pun but they didn't mean to they didn't really want to but they are using one anyway so somebody could say no pun intended or they might say pardon the pun both of them have the same meaning that you're using a pun because of some situation but it's not because you it's not because you wanted to it's because you could and I'll give you an example more commonly I think you might hear people say no pun intended and they would typically say that at the beginning or actually they they would typically say that at the end so after they say the pun then they might say look no pun intended so let me show you another example this is a conversation I came up with this yesterday maybe it's a bad example but hopefully it makes sense so here the the first part would be that you have a father and a son and the son is saying to the father he says hey dad my friends and I are going camping in the graveyard I don't know why they would want to go camping in the graveyard but this is the boy is telling his father we're going camping in the graveyard and the father says over my dead body no pun intended all right now over my dead body this is an idiom which somebody could use that means that you are completely against something if you're saying no you are absolutely not going to do this over my dead body so I'm gonna go ahead and write that in case you did not know the meaning of that idiom over one's dead body is used used used to say that someone is completely and I'd emphasize completely completely against something so in this case the father is saying look you are not going camping over my dead body no pun intended so the reason why that's a pun is because again a graveyard would be full of dead bodies so this would be this would be an example of a way in which somebody could use that expression no pun intended were you you're having a conversation you use a pun but maybe you don't mean to and you could tell that look no pun intended but you're going to use it so hopefully again that makes sense in this situation so let's go ahead now and I want to show you just some different puns just because I think they're humorous they're funny and try to identify why you think again this is funny so I like this one and I got I got some of these from a website which I will link down in the description below and the website just lists I think it was like 80 of the funniest puns and this is good reading practice to go through and read and see if you can identify what the joke is so this says light travels faster than sound that's why some people appear bright and until you hear them speak all right now the reason why this is funny is because of the word bright it has two different meanings bright could be talking about light or bright could be talking about a person's intelligence if I say oh you guys you're very bright it means you're very smart so in this case it's saying light travels faster than sound because some people may look right maybe they look like they're very smart and then you hear them speak and then you think oh okay maybe this person is not very intelligent all right so light travels faster than sound that's why some people appear bright until you hear them speak all right then next one that I want to look at is this one because you might find puns in newspapers these are actually real newspaper articles they were in the cover of newspapers and they try to they use puns they may use them to be entertaining mostly I think to emphasize that something happened so look at the first one this is a picture of Luis Suarez who is a football player from Uruguay now if you don't follow football you may not you may not get this but on many several years ago I don't know if it was during the World Cup Suarez this footballer he has a problem he has a problem because during some of the football matches he tends to bite people and he has bitten several other people on the other teams and it's it's very strange it's very weird it's it's not good but after this happened this article came out and said it had to be true and instead of saying it had to be you which is a famous song by Frank Sinatra and I think other people have done follow-ups to that song they changed you to chew because they sound a little similar and he's talking about him chewing on another person it had to be true the other one is talking about utter devastation so in this case the word if you're talking about devastation a common collocation somebody could say that there was utter devastation all right this is a common collocation that these words are frequently used together if you want to say that there was devastation you could really say that there was a line say oh there was utter devastation but instead of saying utter they're using the word utter and they're probably using that word I'm just guessing I have not read the article is because there were otters that were causing a lot of problems that were destroying things the otters were causing the devastation so that is why they chose this title for the article there's otter devastation which is funny because they're saying instead of saying utter utter devastation utter devastation so puns are something that you find in not just you know jokes that friends might say but you may see it in on the cover of a newspaper or on the cutter cover of a magazine so let's look at this next one this is another good one I thought it was funny I don't know why so this is you have a lighter which is meeting a highlighter and the lighter says highlighter which a highlighter is a type of like marker that you use to highlight some information people might use them to highlight most students might use them to highlight important information in books you have that tool on the computer you have a tool that says highlighter you can you can highlight important information so the lighter says highlighter and then the highlighter says high lighter all right so they're saying the same things it's a pun it's funny no no I thought it was funny the next one is this one I thought this was good I was wondering why the ball was getting bigger then it hit me all right what do you think why why is this pun funny or why is this a pun why is it funny which phrase has two different meanings what do you think I was wondering hmm I was wondering why the ball was getting bigger and then it hit me alright so the phrase in there that has two different meanings is then it hit me so if you're thinking about the what would actually happen alright I was wondering why this ball was getting bigger and then it hit me so the ball is getting bigger because it's coming closer and closer and closer and then it hits this person it actually hits them maybe in the head I don't know but if you also say something like oh and then it hit me yes excellent I think you guys got it so if you say something oh then it hit me it means that you you finally understood something alright so I think one of the key words in there is wondering if you're wondering something like hmm why is this happening why is this happening oh and then it hit me alright so it finally means that you finally understood something you realized some situation and then you could say that so in that case then it hit me could mean like the ball actually hits this person or it means like the person they finally understand why the ball is getting bigger so it works both ways in that case so that is why this is a pun and it's a funny one let's just do one more quick one so this is another one that I think was taken out of a newspaper and it's ketchup talking to a hot dog it says it was nice to meet you and it says yes hope to see you soon so we can catch up so again this is an example of a homophonic pun because we're using words that sound the same these homonyms it was nice to meet you instead of meat is a homonym because instead of saying meat it has the same pronunciation as meat to meet somebody to greet them it's nice to meet you and again I hope to see you soon so we can catch up so the ketchup the scent which I think this one is a little easier to understand to catch and if you don't know that phrase to catch up with someone it means that you you want to get back together with a person so that you can talk and see what's going on in their lives this is something that people say I think quite often like oh you know if you say goodbye to somebody you say oh yeah let's let's catch up soon let's catch up real soon or like when are we gonna get together we really need to catch up it means that you need to meet and discuss what's happening in your life you want to catch up with someone so that is a great phrasal verb to know to catch up with someone alright so those are all different examples we've talked about these different types of puns and I told you you don't necessarily need to learn you don't need to learn that different names the types hopefully it helped you understand them a little bit better but I do I want to thank you guys for joining me and again what oh here we are if you guys like what we do and you do want to sponsor and support interactive English you can get a membership on YouTube somebody got a membership today uh it was raw was it Rob or rod excellent rod yes there's links in the description down below for either a membership on YouTube or patreon links are in the description there are some cool rewards and we are we're always thinking of different ways to engage with our members maybe I've been doing some like sneak preview lessons and I'm constantly trying to think of different ways to do that so if you guys like that you can check that out thank you guys just for joining me I hope you enjoyed the lesson I will link down below in the description that link to that website if you'd like to read through some more puns and it's good practice to see if you can identify them and why they're funny also remember I showed you that book that I was talking about this one which whoops sorry over here the Phantom Tollbooth it's it could be a little challenging but if you want if you're looking for something to read it's a very I don't wanna say it's not really a children's book but maybe more for teenagers but there's a lot of wordplay in this book so it would be very challenging if you're looking for something to read alright so thank you guys give some shoutouts Thank You katroo desk Orlando Luna Aiden good to see you Lali Martha thank you guys for joining me today Juwanna I hope you have I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend and I hope you join me next weekend for another live lesson thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you next time so long

Channel: Interactive English

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Keywords: interactive english, learn english vocabulary, learn interactive english, english grammar, learn grammar, learn english grammar, of meaning, of preposition, how to use the word of, how to use the preposition of, how to use of in english, how to use prepositions in english, english grammar rules, grammar rules

Id: tpKQd4k0Zn0

Length: 29min 15sec (1755 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020