Name ____________________________ Block _____
Figures of Speech - Puns
What are puns?
A pun, also called paronomasia, involves a word play which suggests two or more meanings, by
exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or
rhetorical effect. Puns are constructions used in jokes and idioms whose usage and meaning are
entirely local to a particular language and its culture. To be understood, puns require a large
vocabulary.
Examples:
These are examples of puns:
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"Atheism is a non-prophet institution"
The word "prophet" is put in place of its homophone "profit", altering the common
phrase "non-profit institution".
"Question: Why do we still have troops in Germany?
Answer: To keep the Russians in Czech" - Joke.
This joke relies on the aural ambiguity of the homophones "check" and "Czech"
"You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass." Douglas Adams
The phrase uses the homophonic qualities of "tune a" and "tuna", as well as the
homographic pun on "bass", in which ambiguity is reached through the identical
spellings but different pronunciation of "bass": /'be?s/ (a string instrument), and
/'bæs/ (a kind of fish).
Characteristic of Shakespeare, since Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy, a vast amount of puns, or play on
words, can be found all throughout the play. Below are examples.
Beatrice about Claudio: "..civil as an orange" (II.1. 259).
to describe his jealously and bitterness when Claudio still believes Don Pedro has stolen Hero from him;
a Seville orange is bitter and yellowish in colour
"Claudio: Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of.
Leonato: O, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she found Benedick and Beatrice between the
sheet (II.3.126-129).
The word sheet is used to refer to a piece of paper and used to refer to a bed sheet, with an innuendo
placed in between about Beatrice and Benedick.
Name ____________________________ Block _____
The title itself is a major pun Much ado about nothing; nothing meaning zero, zilch. It also was a slang
in Shakespearean times for female genitalia.
 Your assignment is to locate and explain 2 puns in Act II. Try looking in scene one on page 29
as Benedick speaks despairingly of Beatrice to Don Pedro; and in scene three on page 34 when
Don Pedro and Balthasar have an exchange. We will continue to add and explain puns as we
finish reading the play.
Act.scene.line
numbers
II.1. _____
II.3. _____
what was said
by whom
pun explained