Every Day Is Special: November 8 – National Abet and Aid Punsters Day

November 8 – National Abet and Aid Punsters Day

Posted on November 8, 2017

Do you know what a pun is?

It's a joke that relies on the fact that some words rhyme, or sound a lot alike - or even sound exactly alike.

People often groan at puns rather than laugh, and although some puns have been created by some of the most brilliant authors in the world, including William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, many are clever rather than humorous.

Here are some examples of puns:

Horses are generally stable animals.

> In case you don't get it: A stable is a building meant to house horses, and stable also means steady and secure.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

> In the first sentence, "flies" is a verb, and the word "like" sets up a comparison between time and an arrow - and in the second sentence, "flies" is a noun, and the word "like" is a verb.

Girls just want to have puns.

> A famous song from the 1980s is Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

Do you know why kleptomaniacs have a hard time understanding puns? Because they take things literally.

> Kleptomaniacs are people who steal (take things). Literally can mean "really," so we can say that kleptomaniacs literally take things (in other words, really steal things); however, usually when we say that someone "takes things literally," we mean that he or she doesn't understand sarcasm, hidden meanings, or word play such as puns.