"Puns fight censorship" is very true. During the Brazillian military ditactorship, most protest music got around censorship through wordplay. One of the most notable examples is the song "Chalice". It repeats the verse "Father, take away from me this chalice". On the surface it sounds like a religious song, but actually the word "cálice" in Portuguese sounds like the phrase "cale-se", that means "shut your mouth". The whole song expresses the desire to speak against injustice, and it makes even more puns throughout, such as references to the names of activists murdered by the police.
I was wanting to comment about this song specifically, but i wasnt sure how to properly explain the pun without getting lost in translation, so thanks friend.
43:00 Childishness is good, actually. “Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” - C. S. Lewis
One of my favorite pun-jokes is: "Why did the bicycle fall down?" Answer: "Because it was two tired!" I love it because it connects on multiple levels. Like yeah, the surface pun is that a bicycle has two tires, and being too tired can be a reason for falling down. But then there's the bonus that having just two tires is indeed a likely reason for *specifically* a standing bicycle to fall down in the first place. And then additionally, a bicycle can avoid falling down if it's moving (due to the gyroscopic and stabilization forces from the spinning wheels) but it were too tired, it wouldn't be moving, so it would fall down. It's like puns all the way down. It's been years since this joke first fell upon my ears, but I'm still not tired of it.
"This pie is a bad soup!" long story, i've been looking for a phrase to describe when people say a thing is bad, but they are not evaluating it on its merits, they are evaluating it against their expectation of what it would be. i'd been using "this salad is not a very good steak" but something felt off about it. "This pie is a bad soup" is perfect, thanks Zoe.
I once had a friend who said something that in no way could be misconstrued as word play. He then said, “No pun intended,” and it has made me angrier than any pun ever has.
I love puns. While I love making "clever" puns, the horrible truth is bad puns are my favourite type of quip, because it makes me laugh to watch other people cringe at them. It's my one thing for myself. I love it
For me puns exist on this scale where they're funnier the smarter they are... but also, after a certain point, a pun is even funnier the worse it is. Bad puns nourish me.
One of my proudest moments of writing was including this pun in my story Sub-Time: The main character goes into a digital realm, and meets a commander of a group who essentially revere him. Since the world is digital and it's sci-fi, anything can be created in there with, essentially, a thought. So the MC goes with the commander, and sees a massive statue of himself. He's impressed for a moment, then remembers it wouldn't have taken any effort to build. The commander's response? "Well, it's the thought that counts, right?"
I am just in the middle of doing some research on the connection of nonsense fiction like Phantom Tollbooth and Alice with mathematical thinking and creative reasoning. What good timing for this video to come along!
@@elizakleinman1332 I'm still in the "gather up everything you can find on the subject" sort of phase, but what I want to look at is the ways in which literary nonsense and language games develop mathematical reasoning. The reason I'm particularly interested in Alice is the fact that its author Charles Dodgson was in fact a lecturer in mathematics. Moreover, mathematical game creator Martin Gardner has been a scholar of Alice in Wonderland and published an annotation of the storybook.
i think puns are one of the hardest kinds of humour to do well because of the fact that you need such a good grasp of the language you're making puns in. like if anyone thinks puns are the lowest form of humour they should try to learn a second language and try to understand puns in those second languages without any translation or explanation. it's HARD. and it's even harder to craft puns.
I always thought I hated puns, but I watched this today and later I was discussing spiritual wisdom with my husband and I made a pun to sneakily illustrate my point. Zoe Bee was right all along
In Brazil, we have an iconic song produced during the military ditatorial regime that relies on a pun to make it’s critic. The words for “chalice” ou “cup” and “shut up” are pronounced the same (Cálice - cup / Cale-se - Shut Up). The song’s lyrics went “Cálice, afasta de mim esse cálice, pai, de vinho tinto de sangue” (in English, something like “Cup, take this cup filled with blood-red wine away from Me, Father). *Technically*, it was simply referencing the bible, when Jesus says “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me”. Of course, the *real* meaning was saying “Take this repression (literally, take this “shut up”) filled with blood away from me. The singer was exiled. In one of his shows prior to that, though, the military tried to arrest him, but didn’t manage to, because instead of singing this line, he asked the crowd to sing it for him - and since they couldn’t arrest the whole audience, there was nothing to be done.
You underestimate how large your gen z audience is, "random appearance of spice jar and subsequent deadpan barely-pun statement" is hilarious to us 18:12
I consider myself a millennial, but that quantum superposition of “not funny” and “subverts the expectation that this joke should be funny” is brilliant.
As someone who enjoys good lyrical rap music, puns and double meaning are literally part of the foundation tantamount to rhyme. You can't just rhyme you gotta make sense on some level and the more levels or cleverness the better
As someone who both rhymes and puns frequently, the two require pretty similar skills to execute well, so it's no surprise rap artists are mixing pun and rhyme.
one time my friend complained they had eaten too much cheese and i responded "i'm trying to think of a cheese pun but nothing seems gouda-nough" and that is my crowning achievement to date
just wait until you find out names like gouda are pronounced radically different based on where you are at and you are stuck with making jokes that only a small portion of people will even get and even less will enjoy or as the american expat asked his dutch spouse; "gouda you come up with a gouda pun?"
I loved this video! Laughed a lot!! I think the concept of "Play" is sorely understudied in society and consequently undervalued. Play is how kids learn new things, how we push ourselves to new heights, and how we learn to see the world through new eyes and hear it with new voices. It's such a fundamental part of being human (well, mammal really) and I think it's vital to not only creativity but also empathy. Anyway, here's my pun joke - How many flies does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Only two, but it's tough to get em in there.
I enjoy puns for the childish fun of making someone groan, but also there’s a bit of spite from my school teachers encouraging me to expand my vocabulary only to find out that adults older than me don’t even have that great of a vocabulary But lately I’ve been beginning to enjoy the genuine laughter from a well crafted pun
Absolutely so refreshing to see someone with this view on "childish things". Also, I couldn't help but think of the struggle many of us autistics can have with non obvious sarcasm because the process to understand it is similar to considering multiple meanings like you mention with puns.
This video was wonderful, and I learned a lot about something I love (puns)! Another reason I think some people hate puns is that puns often interrupt the expected flow of conversation. They break the conversational maxim of being relevant. To me, that's actually a big part of the appeal of puns - they subvert the expectation of normal conversation. I also think puns have a lot in common with nonsense humor. Puns are funny because there are two or more meanings, and nonsense is funny because there are zero meanings. Stay safe, stay warm, and stay moist!
"there's nothing funny about just dumping a spice in your hand and saying 'wow, I really got a lot of thyme on my hands'" proceeds to create an incredibly funny experience by having to put the thyme back in its jar
puns are also a good motivation tool when you're learning a new language. it's super exciting to realize you have enough vocabulary to laugh along. great video!
My favourite pun comes from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Space travel is unpleasantly like being drunk. What's so unpleasant about being drunk? Ask a glass of water.
My favorite pun is one that completely falls apart if told aloud: “How do you tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber? Ask them to say ‘unionized’”
You touched slightly on 'puns being good for us'. As a psychologist and biologist especially interested in brain health I'd just like to point out that ALL jokes, puns included (infact the meaningful collabsing of two meanings) automatically elicit both dopamine and serotonine that both make us feel better! So wether you think you respect puns or not, your brains like them. PUNS ARE GOOD FOR YOU. Since I re-learned this fact I brushed off my childhood love of wordplay, and extensively use it to day in my, many various writings, humourous or not. In fact when looking for ideas of a story I often wait for some verbal penny to drop on the subject matter before I start writing. Because then I ALLWAYS know where the story ends. And thus have no fear of just starting writing because I know ahead EXACTLY where this funny story is going to end. Now I just need to fill out the middle part. So, I haven't had a single case of writers-block in seven years.
I'm a professional Japanese linguist and Japan is obsessed with dajare (dah-jah-reh), the Japanese equivalent of puns. I'm literally listening to an anime theme song right now where a character, Nadeko, is singing about her feelings toward the protagonist and gathering up the motivation to pursue him and she starts telling herself a bunch of old-time idioms as encouragement: せんりのみちもいっぽから! 石のようにかたい そんな意志で ("A long road starts with a single step! With a will as hard as stone") ...and then she puns: ちりもつもればやまとなでしこ? (Original Idiom: "Chiri tsumoreba, yama to naru" Meaning: "If you collect enough dust, it'll become a mountain" Lyrics: "Chiri tsumoreba, yamato nadeshiko?" Meaning: "If you collect enough dust, Yamato Nadeshiko?" Layered meaning: "Yamato Nadeshiko" is a name-sounding phrase referring to a pure, traditionally feminine Japanese woman, which Nadeko is always trying, and failing, to act like) 「し」抜きで いや 死ぬ気で! (Idiom: "Shinu ki de" Meaning: "Give it your all" Lyrics: "'shi' nuki de, iya, shinu ki de!" Meaning: "Take out the 'shi', er, I mean, I'll give it my all!" Layered meaning: If you take out the "shi" from "Nadeshiko" from the previous line, it becomes "Nadeko", her name. "'shi' nuki de/shinu ki de", of course, is also turned into a homophonic sentence) So she puns an idiom, then "accidentally" puns another idiom in the process of double-punning her previous pun, and because this song is first played during the intro to her character, it not only exemplifies her motives, but also establishes her personality, all at the same time! And y'all called puns the "lowest form of comedy" for its simplicity...! I love Japanese.
It might surprise you more, though, to learn that when Japanese rappers picked up the expressive musical style of rappers in the US, they made dajare puns a staple of the genre. Japanese rappers are professional punsters. Yup.
Did you really make Renai Circulation even better? I didnt even think that was possible. Side note, if i ever become fluent in japanese, the first thing i'll do is rewatch the Monogatari series, its probably an entirely different show when you can understand every piece of wordplay the author put in there
I'm concurrently studying Japanese and Chinese and one thing about these languages is that each... Hmm let's say syllables functions as a different word or sentence particle but there are a variety of different ways to say the same thing depending if you're being formal vs informal, respectful vs crude, etc. あなたの名前は何ですか？ Anata "you" -no (possessive) namae "name" -wa (subject) nan- "what" desu- "is" ka (question) What is your name? あなたの名前は？ anata-no namae-wa Your name? お名前は？ O-namae-wa? O (respectful) namae-wa? Name? However, in Japanese, it's the sequence of certain syllables that create the word. This is best explained in the example for the O.C. However, you can kinda sorta do the same thing in Chinese. In Chinese, the syllabic restriction is found with the starting consonant and following vowels as well as the tonal passage of the vowels. So "shi" for example, you can say in 5 different ways: shi (neutral), shí (rising), shì (falling), shǐ (fall to rise), and shī (flat). So theoretically you have 5 separate words there, right? Well, just like with Japanese, the context of the word within the structure of the sentence is what matters... UNLESS you're a poet looking to get super creative (or be an asshole) and make a literal poem using the same sound(word) the whole time lol This has not much to do puns but rather the linguistic complexities we create for ourselves to produce art. Language arts, if you will.
The part where you talk about how wordplay was used to get around censors and dictatorships in both China and nazi Germany remind me of how, in Brazil between the 1960s and the 1980s, artists would use wordplay in their music to protest against the military government that had ruled the country through a brutal dictatorship for a little over two decades. I'm not sure I can adequately translate them here but they are really clever. Definitely worth looking up if you're interested
This video has been on my Watch Later for ages and I'm now kicking myself for not watching it sooner. I wish I had enough thyme to show this to every person who's ever complained at one of my puns. Also the ending really resonated with me; we only have to grow old, we don't have to grow up! Childishness is a fantastic quality for anyone to have. I do disagree with the Thyme pun being bad though, I find that hilarious. Probably because the receiver of the pun would be so confused if you just whipped out a jar of thyme mid conversation.
Completely random humor is hysterical in its own way. On a related note, I was talking about puns with one of my friends (I make a lot of puns) and midsentence they opened the fridge, pulled out an egg, and said "I think your jokes are egg-cellent." Totally ridiculous, totally hilarious.
Some of my favorite puns people don't understand as puns: Be there or be square (because you are not a-round) Break a leg (I hope you end up in a cast) Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side (chicken either crosses the road or gets hit by a car)
The funny thing is that those first two at least are complete accidents of linguistics. Those phrases weren't developed through those pun interpretations, it's a nice coincidence that they can be interpreted like that!
We need a hero to avenge the loss of respect that puns got in the last decades, someone to really put pun-deniers in their place, some kind of... Punisher.
Zoe: "The following is not funny: '*pulls out a bottle of spice* Gee I sure have a lot of thyme on my hands'." Me: 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 *Literally has to pause the video to laugh for almost a full minute*. (Sometimes it's not the pun/joke/gag itself, it's the set-up and delivery) -also thyme is an herb, not a spice-
Loved this video. I agree that a lot of the reason people dislike puns is because they're childish. Since people heard a lot of them as kids, puns seem tired and cliché. But there are a lot of clever puns out there, and even bad ones can be fun in the right context.
Some languages pun better than other ones. Here is an old chinese joke. In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions. He often went to the market to look for lions. At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market. At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market. He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die. He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den. The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it. After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions. When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses. Try to explain this matter. Why is this funny? Because, written down, it is a perfectly legible, if odd, paragraph, but spoken aloud, it is pronounced: Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī. Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī. Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì. Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì. Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì. Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì. Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī. Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī. Shì shì shì shì. Chinese is an odd language.
It's remarkable mostly that it's legible. Both Dutch and English (the languages I'm fluent in) have sentences with ludicrous amounts of repeated words, but they've got to be explained to be understandable. Nobody reads "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" and knows it's about bison from Buffalo bullying each other until they're told (or maybe thought real hard). And in Dutch you also quickly lose the thread with, "Als in de plaats waar van de makkelijk te zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven, Zeven, zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven, zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven," which is about sieving seven sieves or something.
@@stevenman013 it doesn't mean though that if you can't make puns yourself you must be stupid. People's minds work differently, I can't make puns either but I admire people who do :)
A man walks into a bar, and says: "I'm a teepee! I'm a wigwam! I'm a teepee! I'm a wigwam!" The bartender puts a hand up and says, "Relax, man! You're two tents!"
Bulbasaur's name and the associated names of its evolutionary line in Japanese are so much better than in the English version, at least in my opinion. フシギダネ(fushigidane) both means a strange seed(不思議な種 fushigi na tane) and is an expression that means "strange, isn't it?"(不思議だね - fushigi da ne） フシギソウ(fushigisou) at first refers to strange grass(不思議草), with the whole being taken as "Strange-seeming"(不思議そう）. フシギバナ(fushigibana) at face value is strange flower(不思議な花 - fushigi na hana) but can sort of be stretched to be 不思議だな, similar to Bulbasaur's name. The whole line looks like a conversation about two people talking about strange plant-monster creatures and being bewildered all the while.
Possibly the best use of non-comedic puns I've experienced come from musical theater. My personal favorite comes from the song "For Good" from the play Wicked: "Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But, because I knew you, I have been changed for good."
Wordplay and puns are amazing, and so too is humor. I can't even imagine being completely dull and serious all the time, as it sounds like a one way trip to complete and utter destruction of my mental health, well-being, and a large part of what makes me who I am. While there is a place and time for being serious, there is a very large portion of time when seriousness is completely optional. For example - Going to the grocery store. Whenever I go there, it seems like most people look like they are going to a funeral, and look grim as anything. Meanwhile, I am busy cracking jokes and generally having a laugh with whomever I happen to go there with, and not giving a single iota about the confused, disapproving stares of other folk because there is nothing that says I can't have fun while being out and about buying stuff to make dinner with. In my opinion, it's utterly possible and completely doable to have fun while doing even the most mundane, everyday things in your life. Because ultimately life is what you make of it, and while you are at it, you might as well have some good-natured fun. So much depends on what outlook one adopts, and how one decided to view things. Thus, the next time the machine you insert your card into to pay for your groceries tells you to feed it your pin number, so it can proceed to take the payment from your card, you might want to tip the cashier off that the machine seems to be hungry on account of its request, and could probably use a sandwich.
I'm taking Chinese, and I'm learning how significant puns are in the language and culture (I'm also very proud of myself for immediately understanding the 小平=小瓶 (xiǎopíng) thing before you explained it, ha). During Chinese New Year, for example, red papers with the character 福(fú) "blessings/happiness/luck/prosperity" are hung upside down on the walls. This is because the phrase 福倒了(fú dào le) "blessings upside-down" sounds the same as 福到了(fú dào le) "blessings arrive." Another is the reason fish is eaten at the New Year celebration: 年年有魚(nián nián yǒuyú) "fish every year" sounds like 年年有余(nián nián yǒuyú) "abundance every year."
Puns are my life. They can be simple and stupid, but they can also be clever, with many layers to them. NOT TO BRAG BUT on rare occassion, I'm able to even pun word into having 3 different meanings. I think people who dislike them are actually just put off that something so small and dumb made them smile.
Chinese puns can get pretty crazy. Not only do they have a lot more similar sounding words than we have in English, but they can also use similar looking characters to make an entirely new type of pun that isn't possible with a phonetic alphabet.
Usually people say "oh that was a REALLY bad pun" to the cleverest and funniest of puns. Like the highest effort ones are considered the worst I never understood that. I always enjoyed puns, and for the longest time thought that reactions to puns as being bad was just a joke in itself.
There are two types of bad puns in my opinion. The puns that are too obvious and the puns that are stretched too thin. if someone makes a pun so obscure that I am unaware that they have done so, and I have to rack my brain for a solid couple if seconds, in order to find a very spurious and flimsy connection, maybe only a few disparate phonemes in common, or only a shadow of a supposed similarity in linguistic structure, and my response has to be "are you trying to say xyz" then due to the exhaustion of mangling words to fit the assumption that a pun has been made results in the pun floating similarly to a rock in a pond. This pundamental problem also arises when a pun is made too late as the the subject has already moved too far away from the basis of the pun for the language used to be remembered. Tldr: if your pun is too much of a stretch then it ceases to be funny because the leap was too great to seem reasonable.
One of my favorite examples of a pun being used to write off more risqué content is a late 19th century song (maybe very early 20th) called “She Sits Among Her Cabbages and Peas”.
Cálice (chalice) is a Brazilian song about the brutal military dictatorship from the 60s to the 80s. It sounds the same as “Cale-se” (shut up), referring to the censorship musicians faced at the time. The subversion was a little too obvious because Chico Buarque was exiled.
Because you just spoke a limerick, I'm going to tell you one of my favourites: The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher Called a hen "a most elegant creature." The hen, just for that, Laid an egg in his hat, And thus did the hen reward Beecher.
Puns really do require a lot of language understanding and abstract thinking! I find punning in my first language easier than most seem to, but I can almost never make puns in English (even though I’m fluent and have a large vocabulary). I often even miss when other people are making puns in English. It’s really fascinating.
Maybe the purple octopus plushie has a bad influence, just look at all the swearing! Guess Zoe was too octopied making the video to notice. Then again, the edits were spectentacular!
Wow I never realised how bad Zoe was at keeping track of Thyme, that pickle really soured the experience for me though. Well either way call me a windmill cause I'm a big fan.
Them: "Verily blah blah lowbrow blah puns are bad blah lots of words that could have been replaced with one etc blah blah" Me: Tell me you hate Shakespeare, without telling me you hate Shakespeare.
oh my god my favorite pun in shakespeare is "I thought you were speaking of Country(Cuntry) matters~" hamlet is such a CAD i like to think "CAN YOU NOT SCRATCH THE COUCH PLEASE" is a part of the poem uwu
23:56 I think this raises a different question. Many many times, we see music as a "lower" form of art -especially if it's rap music- and I think that might make it easier for songwriters to accept puns into their art.
Not sure if it's strictly a pun, but an interesting example of wordplay being Serious And important, during the Korean War Chinese soldiers often refused to surrender when defeated because of the shame involved in doing so. So Paul Linbarger (also known as Golden Age Sci Fi author Cordwainer Smith), came up with a bit of wordplay, wherein the soldiers would say “love,” “duty” “humanity” “virtue” in Chinese. All admirable enough on their own, but they have the added benefit that, when said in that order, sound very much like "I surrender" in English. The soldiers save face, and nobody else has to die, all through a little word play. P.S. Cordwainer Smith's life was wild. He was Sun Yat Sen's godson, literally wrote the book on psychological warfare, and ran espionage missions with Chiang Kai-Shek that are _still_ classified. Also he wrote some of the foundational texts of golden age sci fi. Look him up.
my favorite type of pun is the zeugma :) when one verb is enacted on multiple subjects in different ways. They made dinner and out. she batted her eyelashes and third . The farmer grew corn, potatoes, and bored
In "Star Trek: DS9" there was a time where Commander Sisko is involved in a coversation with Major Nerys. He's distracted by his son and eventually turned around to address his son and It occurred to me (and I let people know) that the Commander declined to talk to a major so he could talk to a minor. :) I really enjoyed this episode as I love puns. I was even born on one, Internation Star Wars Day, 4 May. You know, "May the Fourth Be With You". It only lets mem down at the end because I don't like "Star Wars", biut *do* like "Star Trek" a lot. Thanks again for the video :)
One of my father's favorite jokes was: a man had three sons, and he had a cattle ranch which he named "Focus, where the sons raise meat," (or if you prefer 'where the sun's rays meet'). I always enjoyed that joke. I was raised on puns... even my grandmother joined in the fun at the dinner table. Word play is something we all do, some just to communicate, others, like myself, for fun as well. Sometimes life is serious... like my heart transplant, and sometimes it is to just be enjoyed. 😉❤
Puns are the chaotic neutral of comedy. When used correctly they are perfect, when used incorrectly they are awful for everyone else except the person telling the pun
As someone who makes a lot of puns, I don't think most pun haters realize just how hard it is to think up puns on the fly. It requires a very special sense of language and quick-wittedness. It's like some kind of... pun-tuition. this one admittedly works better in audio form.
I came in as pro pun because I have a burning passion for them. The fact that they're good for your brain and my friends and I enjoy them ALL THE TIME only makes my bias towards them stronger.
Puns are the chaos that spark the structure underneath a seemly overwhelming non-structure system, which is why they are so cool and satisfying cuz they make sense more than you'd expect if you really think about it
Some of my fav puns are pokemon names. Bulbasaur's japanese name is "fushigidane" which means both "strange bulb" but also "isn't it strange?". Wynaut's japanese name is "Sohnano" meaning "Is that so?" and Wobuffet's japanese name is "Sonansu" meaning "That's right!". Audino's japanese name is "Tabunne" meaning "Maybe" Inkay's japanese name is "Maikka" meaning "whatever". Put all these together and you almost get a conversation: Isn't it strange? Is that so? That's right! Maybe. Whatever...
I've long thought that puns are the most "accurate" form of language use - the word fits the context in as many ways as possible, rather than just one. It's impressive. I like to think that's why good puns are often met with compliments rather than laughter. That's not to say puns can't be funny, though. There's something about referencing a completely off-topic image to add a certain comical absurdity to a statement. Much like a DJ and an arsonist, a good pun can turn the tables and light up the room.
Adding to 24:22 onwards: For the "visual learners" among us: how do our brains work? Take a look at her bookshelf. Realisation 1: she colour-coded her books. Realisation 2: she colour-coded her books from 'infrared' to 'ultraviolet'. Realisation 3: some of the books are "out of order". --> We're wired for pattern recognition and that's what makes puns so enjoyable and "good". They "test the pattern". :)
This all just makes me think about how well Jean de Arc was able to subvert expectations and also just how influential she was. It just burns me up when I think about how she died :(
Yes! I've always thought of puns as one of the smartest, funniest, funnest kinds of humor. I was truly dumbfounded when I discovered looking down on puns was a thing.
One of my proudest high school moments was pun-related. In science class age 14, we were doing a worksheet where if we solved chemical equations we would get the answer to "Who rides a camel and carries a lamp?" The worksheet was hard and after 20 minutes where I had mostly just considered the question, no one had solved the riddle. As the class wrapped up, I worked it out, a pun so diabolical that I groaned out loud. Who rides a camel and carries a lamp? Florence of Arabia. Another kid asked how I could have worked that out. The teacher - already aware of how bad I was at chemistry - said "because he thinks in very unusual ways." She sounded so proud of me, even though I had gotten the answer despite not doing the intended work. It was one of the few times in school I actually felt like my creative brain was recognised and valued. All for working out a pun.
Thank you. English is not my first language. So to me, I always found puns amusing. Though, I do feel like the ones that I've heard often make me roll my eyes. Your explanation about why some jokes fall out of style made me realize why some puns are better than others.
31:53 On the topic of censorship there is an example famous in Brazil. It isn't a pun, per say, the song was pretty melancholic; But it was definetly word play. During the 1964 dictatorship here in Brazil there was a song that said "Take this cup away from me" Now the word used for cup in this song specifically was "Cálice" Which sounds like the verb "Cale-se" which means shut-up. There are many other examples from that period, like newspapers hiding complaints on what seemed like innocent recipes and I think there is nothing more human than finding neat little ways to play with words and rules. Puns are just a nice part of being human.
i absolutely love puns and i recently made a - i think - really good one: the other day in lecture the beamer would't work and it projected a blue screen, i said "Der Beamer macht blau" (I'm german) which literally translates to "the beamer makes blue" but is also a metaphor for skipping class/work
I make so many puns that my discord nickname at one point was 'puntifex maxims'. I am very proud of my puns, and if people don't like them they can be punished with more of them.
My grandmother made delicious pies, but they were always very soupy. When she would bring them out she would often joke about serving the soup course, so your comparison really warmed my heart and brought back some happy memories.
Honestly, for someone who lives puns and regularly gives my friends psychic damage through them, I want to share how one goes to create their own pun (or at least my version): Step 1: you notice that two words sound smiliar (this happens randomly to me) Step 2: try and find a way to connect these words in three sentences or less Step 3: try and remove any doubling in setup and pun itself
If you didn’t know that all of the Pokémon names were puns, that’s because it’s really hard to catch ‘em all.
😂
PLEASE
My favourite pun involves confusing chemistry teachers simply showing them the word "unionized" and asking them how it is pronounced
oh my god that took me a minute to realize it union-ized and not un-ionizied
@@lordsquidzo yeah same here
If people didn't like dad jokes, they'd be called bachelor jokes.
Exactly. Moms love dad jokes so much that they make them into dads in the first place
SANS
And when they REALLY hate them, they're creepy uncle jokes.
The good ones stick around and raise you up, the others die alone.
And if they're not ready to call them dad jokes, they're called step-dad jokes.
"Puns fight censorship" is very true. During the Brazillian military ditactorship, most protest music got around censorship through wordplay. One of the most notable examples is the song "Chalice". It repeats the verse "Father, take away from me this chalice". On the surface it sounds like a religious song, but actually the word "cálice" in Portuguese sounds like the phrase "cale-se", that means "shut your mouth". The whole song expresses the desire to speak against injustice, and it makes even more puns throughout, such as references to the names of activists murdered by the police.
That's such a fascinating bit of trivia, thank you for that!
I was wanting to comment about this song specifically, but i wasnt sure how to properly explain the pun without getting lost in translation, so thanks friend.
43:00 Childishness is good, actually. “Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” - C. S. Lewis
One of my favorite pun-jokes is: "Why did the bicycle fall down?"
Answer: "Because it was two tired!"
I love it because it connects on multiple levels. Like yeah, the surface pun is that a bicycle has two tires, and being too tired can be a reason for falling down. But then there's the bonus that having just two tires is indeed a likely reason for *specifically* a standing bicycle to fall down in the first place. And then additionally, a bicycle can avoid falling down if it's moving (due to the gyroscopic and stabilization forces from the spinning wheels) but it were too tired, it wouldn't be moving, so it would fall down.
It's like puns all the way down. It's been years since this joke first fell upon my ears, but I'm still not tired of it.
I really appreciate your tire-ade on this joke.
i haven't heard this specifc variation of this pun before! nice
"This pie is a bad soup!" long story, i've been looking for a phrase to describe when people say a thing is bad, but they are not evaluating it on its merits, they are evaluating it against their expectation of what it would be. i'd been using "this salad is not a very good steak" but something felt off about it. "This pie is a bad soup" is perfect, thanks Zoe.
I once had a friend who said something that in no way could be misconstrued as word play. He then said, “No pun intended,” and it has made me angrier than any pun ever has.
I love puns. While I love making "clever" puns, the horrible truth is bad puns are my favourite type of quip, because it makes me laugh to watch other people cringe at them. It's my one thing for myself. I love it
For me puns exist on this scale where they're funnier the smarter they are... but also, after a certain point, a pun is even funnier the worse it is. Bad puns nourish me.
And so, kindred spirits, in the realm of word-play humor, bad and good puns are golden. We might say they're our "gilt-y" pleasure!
One of my proudest moments of writing was including this pun in my story Sub-Time:
The main character goes into a digital realm, and meets a commander of a group who essentially revere him. Since the world is digital and it's sci-fi, anything can be created in there with, essentially, a thought. So the MC goes with the commander, and sees a massive statue of himself. He's impressed for a moment, then remembers it wouldn't have taken any effort to build. The commander's response?
"Well, it's the thought that counts, right?"
I am just in the middle of doing some research on the connection of nonsense fiction like Phantom Tollbooth and Alice with mathematical thinking and creative reasoning. What good timing for this video to come along!
What's the gist?
@@elizakleinman1332 I'm still in the "gather up everything you can find on the subject" sort of phase, but what I want to look at is the ways in which literary nonsense and language games develop mathematical reasoning. The reason I'm particularly interested in Alice is the fact that its author Charles Dodgson was in fact a lecturer in mathematics. Moreover, mathematical game creator Martin Gardner has been a scholar of Alice in Wonderland and published an annotation of the storybook.
i think puns are one of the hardest kinds of humour to do well because of the fact that you need such a good grasp of the language you're making puns in. like if anyone thinks puns are the lowest form of humour they should try to learn a second language and try to understand puns in those second languages without any translation or explanation. it's HARD. and it's even harder to craft puns.
I always thought I hated puns, but I watched this today and later I was discussing spiritual wisdom with my husband and I made a pun to sneakily illustrate my point. Zoe Bee was right all along
...my main thought with this video was wondering whether the group she was arguing against (pun haters) actually existed. I suppose they do!
In Brazil, we have an iconic song produced during the military ditatorial regime that relies on a pun to make it’s critic. The words for “chalice” ou “cup” and “shut up” are pronounced the same (Cálice - cup / Cale-se - Shut Up). The song’s lyrics went “Cálice, afasta de mim esse cálice, pai, de vinho tinto de sangue” (in English, something like “Cup, take this cup filled with blood-red wine away from Me, Father). *Technically*, it was simply referencing the bible, when Jesus says “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me”. Of course, the *real* meaning was saying “Take this repression (literally, take this “shut up”) filled with blood away from me. The singer was exiled. In one of his shows prior to that, though, the military tried to arrest him, but didn’t manage to, because instead of singing this line, he asked the crowd to sing it for him - and since they couldn’t arrest the whole audience, there was nothing to be done.
You underestimate how large your gen z audience is, "random appearance of spice jar and subsequent deadpan barely-pun statement" is hilarious to us 18:12
I consider myself a millennial, but that quantum superposition of “not funny” and “subverts the expectation that this joke should be funny” is brilliant.
As someone who enjoys good lyrical rap music, puns and double meaning are literally part of the foundation tantamount to rhyme. You can't just rhyme you gotta make sense on some level and the more levels or cleverness the better
As someone who both rhymes and puns frequently, the two require pretty similar skills to execute well, so it's no surprise rap artists are mixing pun and rhyme.
one time my friend complained they had eaten too much cheese and i responded "i'm trying to think of a cheese pun but nothing seems gouda-nough" and that is my crowning achievement to date
just wait until you find out names like gouda are pronounced radically different based on where you are at and you are stuck with making jokes that only a small portion of people will even get and even less will enjoy
or as the american expat asked his dutch spouse; "gouda you come up with a gouda pun?"
The difference between a cat and a comma is that a comma has its pause at the end of its clause.
I loved this video! Laughed a lot!!
I think the concept of "Play" is sorely understudied in society and consequently undervalued. Play is how kids learn new things, how we push ourselves to new heights, and how we learn to see the world through new eyes and hear it with new voices. It's such a fundamental part of being human (well, mammal really) and I think it's vital to not only creativity but also empathy.
Anyway, here's my pun joke - How many flies does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Only two, but it's tough to get em in there.
I enjoy puns for the childish fun of making someone groan,
but also there’s a bit of spite from my school teachers encouraging me to expand my vocabulary only to find out that adults older than me don’t even have that great of a vocabulary
But lately I’ve been beginning to enjoy the genuine laughter from a well crafted pun
Absolutely so refreshing to see someone with this view on "childish things".
Also, I couldn't help but think of the struggle many of us autistics can have with non obvious sarcasm because the process to understand it is similar to considering multiple meanings like you mention with puns.
I once submitted 10 puns to a pun contest hoping one of them would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.
Glorious.
This video was wonderful, and I learned a lot about something I love (puns)! Another reason I think some people hate puns is that puns often interrupt the expected flow of conversation. They break the conversational maxim of being relevant. To me, that's actually a big part of the appeal of puns - they subvert the expectation of normal conversation.
I also think puns have a lot in common with nonsense humor. Puns are funny because there are two or more meanings, and nonsense is funny because there are zero meanings.
Stay safe, stay warm, and stay moist!
"Normal conversation" is dependent on neurotypical expectations. Undermining those offers myriad benefits.
"there's nothing funny about just dumping a spice in your hand and saying 'wow, I really got a lot of thyme on my hands'"
proceeds to create an incredibly funny experience by having to put the thyme back in its jar
honestly, that bit was kind of thyme-consuming.
@@tortis6342 i wish i had less thyme on this earth after reading this
@@tortis6342 Honestly, it was just a small waste of thyme. Plus, we still get to enjoy the outcome, even when the thyme spent wasn’t hours.
puns are also a good motivation tool when you're learning a new language. it's super exciting to realize you have enough vocabulary to laugh along. great video!
My favourite pun comes from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Space travel is unpleasantly like being drunk. What's so unpleasant about being drunk? Ask a glass of water.
My favorite pun is one that completely falls apart if told aloud:
“How do you tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber?
Ask them to say ‘unionized’”
lmfao
You touched slightly on 'puns being good for us'. As a psychologist and biologist especially interested in brain health I'd just like to point out that ALL jokes, puns included (infact the meaningful collabsing of two meanings) automatically elicit both dopamine and serotonine that both make us feel better!
So wether you think you respect puns or not, your brains like them. PUNS ARE GOOD FOR YOU.
Since I re-learned this fact I brushed off my childhood love of wordplay, and extensively use it to day in my, many various writings, humourous or not. In fact when looking for ideas of a story I often wait for some verbal penny to drop on the subject matter before I start writing. Because then I ALLWAYS know where the story ends. And thus have no fear of just starting writing because I know ahead EXACTLY where this funny story is going to end. Now I just need to fill out the middle part. So, I haven't had a single case of writers-block in seven years.
I'm a professional Japanese linguist and Japan is obsessed with dajare (dah-jah-reh), the Japanese equivalent of puns. I'm literally listening to an anime theme song right now where a character, Nadeko, is singing about her feelings toward the protagonist and gathering up the motivation to pursue him and she starts telling herself a bunch of old-time idioms as encouragement:
せんりのみちもいっぽから!
石のようにかたい そんな意志で
("A long road starts with a single step!
With a will as hard as stone")
...and then she puns:
ちりもつもればやまとなでしこ?
(Original Idiom: "Chiri tsumoreba, yama to naru"
Meaning: "If you collect enough dust, it'll become a mountain"
Lyrics: "Chiri tsumoreba, yamato nadeshiko?"
Meaning: "If you collect enough dust, Yamato Nadeshiko?"
Layered meaning: "Yamato Nadeshiko" is a name-sounding phrase referring to a pure, traditionally feminine Japanese woman, which Nadeko is always trying, and failing, to act like)
「し」抜きで いや 死ぬ気で!
(Idiom: "Shinu ki de"
Meaning: "Give it your all"
Lyrics: "'shi' nuki de, iya, shinu ki de!"
Meaning: "Take out the 'shi', er, I mean, I'll give it my all!"
Layered meaning: If you take out the "shi" from "Nadeshiko" from the previous line, it becomes "Nadeko", her name. "'shi' nuki de/shinu ki de", of course, is also turned into a homophonic sentence)
So she puns an idiom, then "accidentally" puns another idiom in the process of double-punning her previous pun, and because this song is first played during the intro to her character, it not only exemplifies her motives, but also establishes her personality, all at the same time! And y'all called puns the "lowest form of comedy" for its simplicity...!
I love Japanese.
It might surprise you more, though, to learn that when Japanese rappers picked up the expressive musical style of rappers in the US, they made dajare puns a staple of the genre. Japanese rappers are professional punsters. Yup.
Did you really make Renai Circulation even better? I didnt even think that was possible. Side note, if i ever become fluent in japanese, the first thing i'll do is rewatch the Monogatari series, its probably an entirely different show when you can understand every piece of wordplay the author put in there
I'm concurrently studying Japanese and Chinese and one thing about these languages is that each... Hmm let's say syllables functions as a different word or sentence particle but there are a variety of different ways to say the same thing depending if you're being formal vs informal, respectful vs crude, etc.
あなたの名前は何ですか？
Anata "you" -no (possessive) namae "name" -wa (subject) nan- "what" desu- "is" ka (question)
What is your name?
あなたの名前は？
anata-no namae-wa
Your name?
お名前は？
O-namae-wa?
O (respectful) namae-wa?
Name?
However, in Japanese, it's the sequence of certain syllables that create the word. This is best explained in the example for the O.C. However, you can kinda sorta do the same thing in Chinese. In Chinese, the syllabic restriction is found with the starting consonant and following vowels as well as the tonal passage of the vowels. So "shi" for example, you can say in 5 different ways: shi (neutral), shí (rising), shì (falling), shǐ (fall to rise), and shī (flat). So theoretically you have 5 separate words there, right? Well, just like with Japanese, the context of the word within the structure of the sentence is what matters... UNLESS you're a poet looking to get super creative (or be an asshole) and make a literal poem using the same sound(word) the whole time lol
This has not much to do puns but rather the linguistic complexities we create for ourselves to produce art. Language arts, if you will.
The part where you talk about how wordplay was used to get around censors and dictatorships in both China and nazi Germany remind me of how, in Brazil between the 1960s and the 1980s, artists would use wordplay in their music to protest against the military government that had ruled the country through a brutal dictatorship for a little over two decades. I'm not sure I can adequately translate them here but they are really clever. Definitely worth looking up if you're interested
This video has been on my Watch Later for ages and I'm now kicking myself for not watching it sooner. I wish I had enough thyme to show this to every person who's ever complained at one of my puns. Also the ending really resonated with me; we only have to grow old, we don't have to grow up! Childishness is a fantastic quality for anyone to have.
I do disagree with the Thyme pun being bad though, I find that hilarious. Probably because the receiver of the pun would be so confused if you just whipped out a jar of thyme mid conversation.
Completely random humor is hysterical in its own way. On a related note, I was talking about puns with one of my friends (I make a lot of puns) and midsentence they opened the fridge, pulled out an egg, and said "I think your jokes are egg-cellent." Totally ridiculous, totally hilarious.
Some of my favorite puns people don't understand as puns:
Be there or be square (because you are not a-round)
Break a leg (I hope you end up in a cast)
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side (chicken either crosses the road or gets hit by a car)
The funny thing is that those first two at least are complete accidents of linguistics. Those phrases weren't developed through those pun interpretations, it's a nice coincidence that they can be interpreted like that!
I told my dad 10 jokes to try to make him laugh. No pun in ten did.
massively underrated joke. this needs to be a staple
We need a hero to avenge the loss of respect that puns got in the last decades, someone to really put pun-deniers in their place, some kind of... Punisher.
Two fish swam into a concrete wall.
One turns to the other and says “Dam!”
The boat was too small to support all of the passengers. It was capsized.
"mathemeticians make good pilots because they spend a lot of time with planes"
for a second, that *flew* over my head
Seems like it landed eventually.
I had to check and look at a new angle to get this.
Think she just winged that one
I can tell you why puns are so offensive.
It's because they're homophonic.
now this is good a pun about pun terminology
I thought it was because they were of fences.
Zoe: "The following is not funny: '*pulls out a bottle of spice* Gee I sure have a lot of thyme on my hands'."
Me: 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 *Literally has to pause the video to laugh for almost a full minute*.
(Sometimes it's not the pun/joke/gag itself, it's the set-up and delivery)
-also thyme is an herb, not a spice-
i can't believe your octopus is your editor.... so talented
i think one of my favorite modern puns is "youre telling me a shrimp fried this rice?"
Loved this video. I agree that a lot of the reason people dislike puns is because they're childish. Since people heard a lot of them as kids, puns seem tired and cliché. But there are a lot of clever puns out there, and even bad ones can be fun in the right context.
Some languages pun better than other ones.
Here is an old chinese joke.
In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions. He often went to the market to look for lions. At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market. At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market. He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die. He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den. The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it. After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions. When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses. Try to explain this matter.
Why is this funny? Because, written down, it is a perfectly legible, if odd, paragraph, but spoken aloud, it is pronounced:
Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī. Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī. Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì. Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì. Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì. Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì. Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī. Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī. Shì shì shì shì.
Chinese is an odd language.
It's remarkable mostly that it's legible. Both Dutch and English (the languages I'm fluent in) have sentences with ludicrous amounts of repeated words, but they've got to be explained to be understandable. Nobody reads "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" and knows it's about bison from Buffalo bullying each other until they're told (or maybe thought real hard). And in Dutch you also quickly lose the thread with, "Als in de plaats waar van de makkelijk te zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven, Zeven, zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven, zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven," which is about sieving seven sieves or something.
This editing is out of control and I fucking love it.
Also "BUT ZOE" accompanied by the cut out is a shirt waiting to happen.
I unironically believe that people who make good puns are highly intelligent and creative
Yes, agreed. And thats the reason I don't like puns. I'm no good at them, so they make me feel slow.
@@stevenman013 it doesn't mean though that if you can't make puns yourself you must be stupid. People's minds work differently, I can't make puns either but I admire people who do :)
My favorite ones are the ones I make that are so subtle that no one notices.
Then I’m like, “you smooth dawg”
A man walks into a bar, and says:
"I'm a teepee! I'm a wigwam! I'm a teepee! I'm a wigwam!"
The bartender puts a hand up and says, "Relax, man! You're two tents!"
i am so mad at this and i love it and am TOTALLY stealing it
Bulbasaur's name and the associated names of its evolutionary line in Japanese are so much better than in the English version, at least in my opinion.
フシギダネ(fushigidane) both means a strange seed(不思議な種 fushigi na tane) and is an expression that means "strange, isn't it?"(不思議だね - fushigi da ne）
フシギソウ(fushigisou) at first refers to strange grass(不思議草), with the whole being taken as "Strange-seeming"(不思議そう）.
フシギバナ(fushigibana) at face value is strange flower(不思議な花 - fushigi na hana) but can sort of be stretched to be 不思議だな, similar to Bulbasaur's name.
The whole line looks like a conversation about two people talking about strange plant-monster creatures and being bewildered all the while.
Possibly the best use of non-comedic puns I've experienced come from musical theater. My personal favorite comes from the song "For Good" from the play Wicked: "Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But, because I knew you, I have been changed for good."
How can anyone think puns are the lowest form of humor when family prank channels exist????
Wordplay and puns are amazing, and so too is humor. I can't even imagine being completely dull and serious all the time, as it sounds like a one way trip to complete and utter destruction of my mental health, well-being, and a large part of what makes me who I am. While there is a place and time for being serious, there is a very large portion of time when seriousness is completely optional. For example - Going to the grocery store. Whenever I go there, it seems like most people look like they are going to a funeral, and look grim as anything. Meanwhile, I am busy cracking jokes and generally having a laugh with whomever I happen to go there with, and not giving a single iota about the confused, disapproving stares of other folk because there is nothing that says I can't have fun while being out and about buying stuff to make dinner with.
In my opinion, it's utterly possible and completely doable to have fun while doing even the most mundane, everyday things in your life. Because ultimately life is what you make of it, and while you are at it, you might as well have some good-natured fun. So much depends on what outlook one adopts, and how one decided to view things. Thus, the next time the machine you insert your card into to pay for your groceries tells you to feed it your pin number, so it can proceed to take the payment from your card, you might want to tip the cashier off that the machine seems to be hungry on account of its request, and could probably use a sandwich.
I'm taking Chinese, and I'm learning how significant puns are in the language and culture (I'm also very proud of myself for immediately understanding the 小平=小瓶 (xiǎopíng) thing before you explained it, ha). During Chinese New Year, for example, red papers with the character 福(fú) "blessings/happiness/luck/prosperity" are hung upside down on the walls. This is because the phrase 福倒了(fú dào le) "blessings upside-down" sounds the same as 福到了(fú dào le) "blessings arrive." Another is the reason fish is eaten at the New Year celebration: 年年有魚(nián nián yǒuyú) "fish every year" sounds like 年年有余(nián nián yǒuyú) "abundance every year."
Puns are my life. They can be simple and stupid, but they can also be clever, with many layers to them. NOT TO BRAG BUT on rare occassion, I'm able to even pun word into having 3 different meanings. I think people who dislike them are actually just put off that something so small and dumb made them smile.
Chinese puns can get pretty crazy. Not only do they have a lot more similar sounding words than we have in English, but they can also use similar looking characters to make an entirely new type of pun that isn't possible with a phonetic alphabet.
@@gregoryford2532 reading a bad pun in english can make you see-sick
The fact you didn't say "I guess it's like they say, thyme flies" after getting it everywhere disappoints me greatly
Usually people say "oh that was a REALLY bad pun" to the cleverest and funniest of puns. Like the highest effort ones are considered the worst I never understood that. I always enjoyed puns, and for the longest time thought that reactions to puns as being bad was just a joke in itself.
There are two types of bad puns in my opinion. The puns that are too obvious and the puns that are stretched too thin. if someone makes a pun so obscure that I am unaware that they have done so, and I have to rack my brain for a solid couple if seconds, in order to find a very spurious and flimsy connection, maybe only a few disparate phonemes in common, or only a shadow of a supposed similarity in linguistic structure, and my response has to be "are you trying to say xyz" then due to the exhaustion of mangling words to fit the assumption that a pun has been made results in the pun floating similarly to a rock in a pond. This pundamental problem also arises when a pun is made too late as the the subject has already moved too far away from the basis of the pun for the language used to be remembered.
Tldr: if your pun is too much of a stretch then it ceases to be funny because the leap was too great to seem reasonable.
Well if the joke was in something else it wouldn't be as funny.
One of my favorite examples of a pun being used to write off more risqué content is a late 19th century song (maybe very early 20th) called “She Sits Among Her Cabbages and Peas”.
Cálice (chalice) is a Brazilian song about the brutal military dictatorship from the 60s to the 80s. It sounds the same as “Cale-se” (shut up), referring to the censorship musicians faced at the time. The subversion was a little too obvious because Chico Buarque was exiled.
Because you just spoke a limerick, I'm going to tell you one of my favourites:
The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Called a hen "a most elegant creature."
The hen, just for that,
Laid an egg in his hat,
And thus did the hen reward Beecher.
"I'm really in a pickle now"
This killed me, that was amazing
Puns really do require a lot of language understanding and abstract thinking! I find punning in my first language easier than most seem to, but I can almost never make puns in English (even though I’m fluent and have a large vocabulary). I often even miss when other people are making puns in English. It’s really fascinating.
Maybe the purple octopus plushie has a bad influence, just look at all the swearing!
Guess Zoe was too octopied making the video to notice.
Then again, the edits were spectentacular!
I am a sucker for your jokes.
does this even make sense? you know like tentacles... suckers.
I like how the end has bloopers, like the whole video was totally not a video essay blooper
Wow I never realised how bad Zoe was at keeping track of Thyme, that pickle really soured the experience for me though. Well either way call me a windmill cause I'm a big fan.
Such a waste of thyme tho
If anyone complains about the lengths she goes to in her videos now she can just say that they probably have a sensitive palate!
The baseballer hit the ball with his bat, both the ball and the bat ended up quite bloody
Them: "Verily blah blah lowbrow blah puns are bad blah lots of words that could have been replaced with one etc blah blah"
Me: Tell me you hate Shakespeare, without telling me you hate Shakespeare.
So glad someone else loves the phantom tollbooth as much as I do! My favorite childhood book, but no one ever talks about it.
oh my god my favorite pun in shakespeare is "I thought you were speaking of Country(Cuntry) matters~" hamlet is such a CAD
i like to think "CAN YOU NOT SCRATCH THE COUCH PLEASE" is a part of the poem uwu
23:56 I think this raises a different question. Many many times, we see music as a "lower" form of art -especially if it's rap music- and I think that might make it easier for songwriters to accept puns into their art.
Puns also bring the inherent joy of pissing people off
"Im gonna have thyme in my carpet forever"
I mean
Oh boy
That would
Take a lot of
Thyme
To clean it up
Oh my
Not sure if it's strictly a pun, but an interesting example of wordplay being Serious And important, during the Korean War Chinese soldiers often refused to surrender when defeated because of the shame involved in doing so. So Paul Linbarger (also known as Golden Age Sci Fi author Cordwainer Smith), came up with a bit of wordplay, wherein the soldiers would say “love,” “duty” “humanity” “virtue” in Chinese. All admirable enough on their own, but they have the added benefit that, when said in that order, sound very much like "I surrender" in English. The soldiers save face, and nobody else has to die, all through a little word play.
P.S. Cordwainer Smith's life was wild. He was Sun Yat Sen's godson, literally wrote the book on psychological warfare, and ran espionage missions with Chiang Kai-Shek that are _still_ classified. Also he wrote some of the foundational texts of golden age sci fi. Look him up.
my favorite type of pun is the zeugma :) when one verb is enacted on multiple subjects in different ways. They made dinner and out. she batted her eyelashes and third . The farmer grew corn, potatoes, and bored
In "Star Trek: DS9" there was a time where Commander Sisko is involved in a coversation with Major Nerys. He's distracted by his son and eventually turned around to address his son and It occurred to me (and I let people know) that the Commander declined to talk to a major so he could talk to a minor. :) I really enjoyed this episode as I love puns. I was even born on one, Internation Star Wars Day, 4 May. You know, "May the Fourth Be With You". It only lets mem down at the end because I don't like "Star Wars", biut *do* like "Star Trek" a lot. Thanks again for the video :)
One of my father's favorite jokes was: a man had three sons, and he had a cattle ranch which he named "Focus, where the sons raise meat," (or if you prefer 'where the sun's rays meet'). I always enjoyed that joke. I was raised on puns... even my grandmother joined in the fun at the dinner table.
Word play is something we all do, some just to communicate, others, like myself, for fun as well. Sometimes life is serious... like my heart transplant, and sometimes it is to just be enjoyed. 😉❤
Puns are the chaotic neutral of comedy. When used correctly they are perfect, when used incorrectly they are awful for everyone else except the person telling the pun
As someone who makes a lot of puns, I don't think most pun haters realize just how hard it is to think up puns on the fly. It requires a very special sense of language and quick-wittedness. It's like some kind of... pun-tuition.
this one admittedly works better in audio form.
I came in as pro pun because I have a burning passion for them. The fact that they're good for your brain and my friends and I enjoy them ALL THE TIME only makes my bias towards them stronger.
haven't watched it yet but from the title alone you are my favorite youtuber now
Puns are the chaos that spark the structure underneath a seemly overwhelming non-structure system, which is why they are so cool and satisfying cuz they make sense more than you'd expect if you really think about it
Some of my fav puns are pokemon names.
Bulbasaur's japanese name is "fushigidane" which means both "strange bulb" but also "isn't it strange?".
Wynaut's japanese name is "Sohnano" meaning "Is that so?" and Wobuffet's japanese name is "Sonansu" meaning "That's right!".
Audino's japanese name is "Tabunne" meaning "Maybe"
Inkay's japanese name is "Maikka" meaning "whatever".
Put all these together and you almost get a conversation:
Isn't it strange?
Is that so?
That's right!
Maybe.
Whatever...
Sounds like two chatbots 😄
I've long thought that puns are the most "accurate" form of language use - the word fits the context in as many ways as possible, rather than just one. It's impressive. I like to think that's why good puns are often met with compliments rather than laughter.
That's not to say puns can't be funny, though. There's something about referencing a completely off-topic image to add a certain comical absurdity to a statement. Much like a DJ and an arsonist, a good pun can turn the tables and light up the room.
Some people stim with clicky objects. My brain stims with puns.
In both cases, it sometimes pushes people's buttons.
Ooooh that makes sense. I stim with puns and tapping.
So THAT'S why im a compulsive punster!
I (p)understand everything now.
Adding to 24:22 onwards: For the "visual learners" among us: how do our brains work? Take a look at her bookshelf.
Realisation 1: she colour-coded her books.
Realisation 2: she colour-coded her books from 'infrared' to 'ultraviolet'.
Realisation 3: some of the books are "out of order".
--> We're wired for pattern recognition and that's what makes puns so enjoyable and "good". They "test the pattern".
:)
……There are books out of order?……
@@phosphorus4 Hahaha. Exactly.
This all just makes me think about how well Jean de Arc was able to subvert expectations and also just how influential she was.
It just burns me up when I think about how she died :(
Yes! I've always thought of puns as one of the smartest, funniest, funnest kinds of humor. I was truly dumbfounded when I discovered looking down on puns was a thing.
One of my proudest high school moments was pun-related. In science class age 14, we were doing a worksheet where if we solved chemical equations we would get the answer to "Who rides a camel and carries a lamp?"
The worksheet was hard and after 20 minutes where I had mostly just considered the question, no one had solved the riddle.
As the class wrapped up, I worked it out, a pun so diabolical that I groaned out loud. Who rides a camel and carries a lamp? Florence of Arabia.
Another kid asked how I could have worked that out. The teacher - already aware of how bad I was at chemistry - said "because he thinks in very unusual ways." She sounded so proud of me, even though I had gotten the answer despite not doing the intended work. It was one of the few times in school I actually felt like my creative brain was recognised and valued. All for working out a pun.
"Bulbasaur is the best gen 1 starter" - Zoe Bee proving that she is, in fact, based.
Thank you. English is not my first language. So to me, I always found puns amusing. Though, I do feel like the ones that I've heard often make me roll my eyes. Your explanation about why some jokes fall out of style made me realize why some puns are better than others.
31:53 On the topic of censorship there is an example famous in Brazil. It isn't a pun, per say, the song was pretty melancholic; But it was definetly word play.
During the 1964 dictatorship here in Brazil there was a song that said "Take this cup away from me"
Now the word used for cup in this song specifically was "Cálice" Which sounds like the verb "Cale-se" which means shut-up. There are many other examples from that period, like newspapers hiding complaints on what seemed like innocent recipes and I think there is nothing more human than finding neat little ways to play with words and rules. Puns are just a nice part of being human.
i absolutely love puns and i recently made a - i think - really good one: the other day in lecture the beamer would't work and it projected a blue screen, i said "Der Beamer macht blau" (I'm german) which literally translates to "the beamer makes blue" but is also a metaphor for skipping class/work
Through many novel chapters I crawled or sailed in search of wisdom, but alas... I have become only wordly.
What I love most about Puns is when people do them in quick reaction to something or just in conversation. I respect quick wit
I make so many puns that my discord nickname at one point was 'puntifex maxims'. I am very proud of my puns, and if people don't like them they can be punished with more of them.
My grandmother made delicious pies, but they were always very soupy. When she would bring them out she would often joke about serving the soup course, so your comparison really warmed my heart and brought back some happy memories.
My dog has a great job in construction. Turns out he's a natural born roofer...
Thank you, thank you... I'll see myself out.
Honestly, for someone who lives puns and regularly gives my friends psychic damage through them, I want to share how one goes to create their own pun (or at least my version):
Step 1: you notice that two words sound smiliar (this happens randomly to me)
Step 2: try and find a way to connect these words in three sentences or less
Step 3: try and remove any doubling in setup and pun itself
ngl this was an entertaining 50 minutes on puns but also 50 minutes where I haven't been doing my essay. Worth it nontheless
Same, but for me it’s 50 minutes when I should have logged in to work. In other words, how do you do, fellow youngsters?
Alfred Hitchcock once said, "Puns are the highest form of literature."
When you were stuck trying to finish the the pickle, you were quite...
Encumbered
Don’t stop eating dill your done
The “some antics” pun was my favorite
Hypothetical viewer: "Puns just aren't funny, there's no defending that!"
Me who chuckled at all the examples Zoe gave about 5 minutes ago: suurrrrre