Online Encyclopedia

Brown "1 is one example among the innumerable puns with which his poems are filled . The derivation of the word is not known . It first appears in the second See also:

HALF

half of the 1 7th See also:

CENTURY (from Lat. centuria, a division of a hundred men)

century . See also:

SKEAT, WALTER WILLIAM (1835– )

Skeat (Etym . Did., 1898) identifies it with an obsolete and dialectal variant of " See also:

pound," to See also:

BEAT (a word common in various forms to the Teutonic languages; it is connected with the similar Romanic words derived from the Late Lat. battere)

beat in the sense of " to pound words, to beat them into new senses, to See also:

HAMMER, FRIEDRICH JULIUS (1810-1862)

hammer at forced similes" The New See also:

ENGLISH

English See also:

DICTIONARY

Dictionary considers it was probably one of the shortened words, like " See also:

mob," " cit," &c., which were See also:

COMMON

common in See also:

SLANG

slang after the Restoration . In R . L'Estrange, Counsellor See also:

MANNERS, CHARLES (1857– )

Manners's Last See also:

LEGACY (Lat. legatum)

Legacy (1676), " pun " is found with punnet, pundigrion and quibble, " of which fifteen will not make up one single jest." Possibly these may be all referred to " punctilio" (It. puntiglio, dim. of punto, point, See also:

Lat. punctum), a small, See also:

FINE

fine point, a cavil or quibble . No See also:

HISTORICAL

historical connexion, however, has been found between the words .

End of Article: PUN

[back]
PUMPKIN

[next]
PUNCH

Additional information and Comments

There are no comments yet for this article.

» Add information or comments to this article.

Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click and select "copy." Paste it into a website, email, or other HTML document.

Do not copy, download, transfer, or otherwise replicate the site content in whole or in part.
Links to articles and home page are encouraged.