Did I Hear You Right?

"No, I said, 'Did you hear that I write?'"

English is an excellent language for puns. How many puns have you heard in the last month? How rich must be a language that permits such wordplay!

Our mother tongue is chockful of homonyms, words that are pronounced the same regardless of their spelling.

Our Bible study group recently took advantage of this, in a homonym-based game. Each team came up with a homonym and concocted various sentences in which we replaced that word with “teapot.”

For example:

We ate good teapot.

It’s not teapot!

Yesterday, we went to the teapot!

God is teapot.

Those are very teapot flowers.

We payed a teapot.

Any ideas?

The word was “fair” or “fare.”

Now, poems are not usually guessing games, but poetry is fair ground for any type of wordplay, and poets have traditionally made good use of their language’s propensity for puns.

The most amusing instance of punning poetry that I personally have encountered is in the poem below, written by Chong Ch’ol, translated by Grame Wilson:

Magistrate

When I was made the magistrate

Of this benighted town

I had not thought to spend my days

In bobbing up and down.

How can so dwarf a township

Produce so vast a crowd

Of visitors concerned to brag

That we have met and bowed?

Greetings, flatteries, farewells:

One bows and bows again.

No wonder magistrates are rarely

Seen as upright men.

Ironically, this poem was originally written in Korean. I do not know how direct the translation is, but the pun works charmingly in English.

Another good instance of wordplay is in George Herbert’s poem The Quidditie.

The word “quiddity” has two nearly opposite meanings:

1.       whatever makes something the type that it is: essence

2.       a trifling point: quibble

The poem could be read with either definition in mind. I do not know for certain if Herbert intended it that way, but it intrigues me.

This poem is not, however, intended to be humorous. Wordplay need not always be lighthearted—it is a means of gaining your reader (or listener’s attention), of making them think a little deeper, or of amusing them more than you might have otherwise.

Doubtless several tomes could be compiled with examples of homonyms and double-meaning words in English poetry, but I’m here only to give you a taste and to encourage you to appreciate wordplay wherever you encounter it.

Photo credito to Edho Patama on Unsplash