Word play

"Wordplay" redirects here. For other uses, see Wordplay (disambiguation).

Word play or wordplay is a literary technique and a form of wit in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Puns, phonetic mix-ups such as spoonerisms, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, and telling character names are common examples of word play.

Word play is quite common in oral cultures as a method of reinforcing meaning.

Examples of visual orthographic and sound-based word play abound in both alphabetically and non-alphabetically written literature (e.g. Chinese).

Techniques

Puns, phonetic mix-ups such as spoonerisms, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, and telling character names – such as The Importance of Being Earnest (Ernest/earnest being both a name and an adjective), and also double entendre – are common examples of word playing.

Interpreting idioms literally, contradictions, and redundancies are often used in word play, as in Tom Swifties:

"Hurry up and get to the back of the ship," Tom said sternly.

Linguistic fossils and set phrases are common fodder for word play, as in Wellerisms:

"We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car.

Another use of fossils is in using antonyms of unpaired words – “I was well-coiffed and sheveled,” (from “disheveled”).

Examples

Many businesses use word play to their advantage by making their business names more memorable. This business is located near the United Nations Headquarters and plays on the term UN Peacekeepers.

Most writers engage in word play to some extent, but certain writers are particularly committed to, or adept at, word play as a major feature of their work . Shakespeare's "quibbles" have made him a noted punster. Similarly, P.G. Wodehouse was hailed by The Times as a "comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce" for his own ingenious wordplay.^{citation needed} James Joyce, author of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, is another noted word-player. For example, Joyce's phrase "they were yung and easily freudened" clearly implies the more conventional "they were young and easily frightened", however the former also makes an apt pun on the names of two famous psychoanalysts, Jung and Freud.

An epitaph, probably unassigned to any grave, demonstrates use in rhyme.

Here lie the bones of one 'Bun'

He was killed with a gun.

His name was not 'Bun' but 'Wood'

But 'Wood' would not rhyme with gun

But 'Bun' would.

Other writers and entertainers closely identified with word play include:

• Above
• Forrest J Ackerman, magazine editor, coined "sci-fi"
• Aesop Rock
• GZA
• Piers Anthony in his Xanth novels
• Beck
• Big Daddy Kane
• Big L
• Cam'ron
• Isaac Brock (musician) vocalist/lyricist of Modest Mouse
• Canibus,
• Chamillionaire
• Childish Gambino
• Chris and Margo
• George Carlin
• Lewis Carroll, in his Alice books, among other works
• G. K. Chesterton
• Chino XL,
• Brian P. Cleary in his "Rhyme and PUNishment: Adventures in Wordplay"
• Max Collins, lead vocalist and lyricist of Eve 6
• Crooked I
• Ian Dury
• Benny Hill
• Bo Burnham
• Bob Dylan
• Elvis Costello
• Eyedea
• Willard R. Espy collected various anthologies of word play
• Jasper Fforde
• Lil Wayne^{citation needed}
• Lupe Fiasco
• Craig Finn, lead vocalist and lyricist of The Hold Steady
• Sage Francis
• Frenzal Rhomb
• Homer in his famous works The Iliad and The Odyssey
• Mitch Hurwitz in his acclaimed TV-series Arrested Development, which is widely noted for its unusually intricate and complex use of word play.
• Franz Kafka, perhaps most notably in The Judgment.
• Kool Keith
• Jack Kerouac (in On the Road and arguably more so in Visions of Cody)
• John Lennon in (In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works) ("The Nasties Are Booming Us!")
• Till Lindemann
• Lloyd Banks
• Nas
• MF DOOM
• Seth MacFarlane
• Marilyn Manson
• Manila Luzon
• Groucho Marx
• A. A. Milne's poem "In the dark", in Now We Are Six, has been noted for its emulation of crib talk, a form of monologue word play used by infants to practice phonology, syntax and conversation skills
• Jason Mraz
• Alan Moore
• Dave Mustaine
• Vladimir Nabokov
• Flann O'Brien
• Van Dyke Parks
• Emo Philips, stand-up comedian, revered for his paraprosdokians and garden-path jokes
• Thomas Pynchon
• Spider Robinson in his Callahan series, e.g. Lady Slings the Booze.
• Rhyme Asylum
• George Bernard Shaw
• The Apocryphal book of Susanna features elements of word play in the original Greek
• Steven Wright
• Andy Zaltzman
• John Donne
• J. Cole
• Earl Sweatshirt
• Mushroomhead
• TISM
• Eminem
• Jay-Z
• George Watsky
• Angel Haze

Related phenomena

Word play can enter common usage as neologisms.

Word play is closely related to word games, that is, games in which the point is manipulating words. See also language game for a linguist's variation.

See also

• Etymology
• Figure of speech
• List of forms of word play
• Metaphor
• Simile

External links

• A categorized taxonomy of word play composed of record-holding words