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Updated: June 12, 2025
* A proverbial and punning expression in that county, to intimate that a person is not very clever. "Send her in here, then, and do you remain below, Mr. Stubbs."
At the time when he wrote these words, he evidently undervalued his own serious power, and thought that in punning and broad-grinning lay his chief strength. Is not there something touching in that simplicity and humility of faith?
The story of the crafty adventurer and the blinding of the giant, with the punning device by which the hero escaped, exists in the shape of a detached marchen or fairy-tale among races who never heard of Homer.
Archibald, who had a weakness for punning, was in one of his gayest moods, and was not above being occasionally appreciated by the waiter. Morgan did his best to appear cheerful; he did not wish his father to suspect anything was amiss. He listened to a humourous account of home affairs with smiling face, even interposing a few humourous comments of his own.
But talking in too loud a tone is scarcely less unpleasant to the listeners than the use of too low a tone, which is generally an affectation. She must avoid frequent attempts at wit; avoid punning, which is the cheapest possible form of wit; and avoid sarcasm. The talent for being sarcastic is a most dangerous one. 'No one ever knew a sarcastic woman who could keep friends.
The princess did not appear to understand him, for she retorted his question: "How do YOU like falling in?" said the princess. "Beyond everything," answered he; "for I have fallen in with the only perfect creature I ever saw." "No more of that: I am tired of it," said the princess. Perhaps she shared her father's aversion to punning. "Don't you like falling in then?" said the prince.
A graver fault than this boyish love of punning is the undeniable vein of coarseness which here and there disfigures Sydney Smith's controversial method. In 1810 he wrote, very characteristically, about his friend Lord Grey "His deficiency is a want of executive coarseness." This is a fault with which he could never have charged himself.
In France, when a prisoner of war, learning French there without a master, he had heard a saying that he now recalled to some purpose: Vin de grain est plus doux que n'est pas vin de presse "Willing duties are sweeter than those that are extorted." The punning allusion to the press had tickled his fancy and fixed the significant truism in his memory.
The characteristics of the style have been set forth as "pedantic and far-fetched allusion, elaborate indirectness, a cloying smoothness and drowsy monotony of diction, alliteration, punning, and such-like puerilities, which do not, however, exclude a good deal of wit, fancy, and prettiness." Many contemporary authors, including Shakespeare, made game of it, while others, e.g.
Forey advised his punning grandson Clarence to give that house a wide berth, where he might be disposed of and dished-up at a moment's notice, and the scent ran off at a jest.
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