![]() Each of those examples reveals something within the larger context of the work: Scrooge puns when seeing the first ghost because he thinks the apparition is a hallucination caused by a bad meal, Mercutio is upbeat and witty concealing the seriousness of his wounds, and Mary Crawford's speech foreshadows that her wealth and connections have not really made her genteel. Of Rears and Vices, I saw enough," in Mansfield Park, leaving later generations of readers wondering whether Crawford is talking about different ranks of admirals or something else. ![]() In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens has Ebenezer Scrooge tell the ghost of Jacob Marley "There's more of gravy than of grave about you," and Shakespeare uses a similar pun in Romeo and Juliet where Mercutio is fatally wounded (3.1.94-95) yet plays on the different noun and adjectival meanings of grave with "Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man." Even prim and proper Jane Austen gives Mary Crawford the line, "Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. ![]() Within historic fiction, esteemed authors pun freely including in situations that modern tastes would regard as most inappropriate. The stigma against puns in the English language is a contemporary attitude. On the other hand, languages such as Chinese or Japanese, where words can be chosen for sound, character, or meaning, allow for puns of incredible complexity, working on multiple levels, and they are often viewed as an art form. The problem with puns is that they are seen as the lowest form of humor, (although poetry is verse), and often are not very punny, at least in English - at best, they're So Bad, It's Good. This can also take the form of substituting one word for a different, similarly sounding word. A pun (also known as a pune, or a play on words) is a form of word play where a word with more than one meaning is exploited to make a joke or Riddle based on this double meaning.
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