![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() With his championship-tested mind and high-profile pedigree, Pollack is just the person to defend the pun as wordplay that goes well beyond its frequent derision as the lowest form of humor. Especially when two words can sound exactly alike." "And if you think about it, it's incredibly complex. "The brain goes through some incredible gymnastics to capture the meaning of puns," Pollack tells Weekend Edition Sunday's Liane Hanson. But with his new book, The Pun Also Rises, he's returned to his longtime love. Puns are sometimes cringe inducing - but sometimes they hit the funny bone at just the right place, and besides, the pun is actually the subject of serious academic study.Īfter he won the Pun-Off championship, Pollack put that penchant for verbal manipulation to work as a presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton. If you groaned at that joke, you're not alone. Henry Pun-Off World Champion, for an example, and he'll have something like this at his fingertips: The definition of "pun" might be hard to put a finger on, but ask John Pollack, the 1995 O. "The most common type of pun is the humorous use of a word in such a way that because of its sound, you can interpret it in more than one way." "A pun is notoriously difficult to define, but it's a type of wordplay, and it takes many different forms," says John Pollack. The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics ![]()
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