Other forms: puns
A pun is a joke built on a word with two meanings. A terrible pun, pun intended, groan at the pun.
Pun intended and no pun intended are the standard tags, and the second is almost always false. Puns are the lowest form of wit and the highest form of literature depending on who is speaking, and Shakespeare made several thousand of them. They translate almost never, which is the central problem of translating comedy. Note punning, punster; and that a pun works by making the listener hold two meanings at once.
1nounpunA joke built on a word with two meanings.
“My dad can't resist making a terrible pun whenever someone mentions food.”
synonyms: wordplay, play on words
pun is a joke.
Also accepted in games: wordplay
The word appeared in the seventeenth century with no clear origin, possibly from an Italian word meaning a fine point. It arrived as slang and was disapproved of for about a century.
Proto-Germanic
*punōną — to break to pieces, pulverize
Old English
punian
Middle English
ponnen
English, today
pun
Built from
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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA