The wealth of polysemous words in English may be the bane of foreign learners, but the effortless ease with which they can be used to create humor and irony makes them the mainstay of subeditors, songwriters, ad people — everyone in fact who needs to think up attention-catching language. Puns, paragrams, and other forms of word play are pressed into service anywhere and everywhere — book titles and newspaper headlines, product and store names, billboards and T-shirts, stickers and badges.

Also See in TVR: The Root of the Matter by Brenda Townsend Hall

A pun is defined as the amusing use of a word that can have two meanings, or of different words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning. Like the slogan for a new adhesive: Our Word is Your Bond. Or the macro charity rock concert Band Aid. Or the comedians' charity initiative Comic Relief.

The feature of English that makes these neat puns possible is the homonym, which is one of a group of words pronounced or spelt or both pronounced and spelt in the same way but having different meanings. The use of a homonym generates ambiguity; that is, the word, phrase, or sentence can be understood in two ways. Many statements are ambiguous in isolation but clear in context or are amenable to logical analysis. In the very best puns, both meanings will be relevant in some way to the context.

Two kinds of homonyms are the cornerstones of punning. Homographs are words that are spelt identically but have different origins.

They may be pronounced identically (like bear = animal, bear = carry) or differently (lead = metal, to lead = to go in front, lead = leash; entrance = place of entry, to entrance = to delight). Those that are pronounced identically, of course, are easily pressed into pun service. Like Jet Set, an expensive quick-drying nail polish: cosmetics for the witty and urbane. For the etymology buff, to set (= to become firm, solid) derives ultimately from Old English settan, the causative of sittan (to sit), whereas set (= group) is from Old French sette from Latin secta, although its later sense was influenced by the verb set.

Homophones are words that are pronounced the same but spelt differently, for example, week/weak, bear/bare, board/bored, coarse/course. Two Much, the title of the screwball comedy film, instantly suggests a love triangle — "Two's company, three's a crowd" — and in fact the two men in the triangle are twins. Talking of the silver screen, what else could a movie magazine dub its gossip column but Idol Chatter? An article on aromatherapy, naturally, is entitled Good Scents. The Apple Corps was a true inspiration for a firm of Apple Mac technicians in search of a name. And computer language has trickled down to the high street, with a London snack bar offering the Megabite special, a meal-sized sandwich. The Good Plaice, of course, is a fishmonger's. The title of an album by death-metal band Megadeth [sic] is presumably the ultimate expression of young people's view of our destructive society: Youthanasia.

Whether you revel in the richness and versatility of English and the ingenuity of its anonymous punsters or just groan, you're in good company. Dryden called the pun "the lowest and most groveling kind of wit." "An exercise in jocularity, and a pretty debased form even of that" is how we now regard the pun, according to Ernest Gowers in his 1965 edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage. Linguist David Crystal calls puns "verbal practical jokes" and also reports a phenomenon of compulsive punning, first recorded by a German surgeon in 1939 and now known as Förster's syndrome. Internet search engines, however, have so far failed to come up with any more information on this condition.

In fact, the pun goes way back, right into the mists of preliteracy. In oral societies, sound was power, and similar sounds have often been taken to mean similar natures and origins. In Hebrew, the similarity of the word for man and earth (both represented in the name Adam) strengthened a belief that humanity was formed from clay. In ancient times, puns were used to suggest deep truths. The pun was a favorite figure of rhetoric among the Hebrews, and many of the ancient Greek writers were also fond of puns. Numerous examples can be found in both the Old and New Testaments, especially in the writings of St Paul. Most puns, unfortunately (or fortunately) are untranslatable. One that has traveled well (although not in English) is in Matthew 16:1: "Thou art Peter (Greek Petros) and on this rock (petra) I will build my church." Here the New Testament Greek rendered a pun apparently first made in Aramaic with the word kephas. And it is still possible in French with Pierre/pierre.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, puns were common among dramatists, writers, and poets. Shakespeare put no fewer than 3,000 of them into his plays, even at dramatic moments that nowadays seem singularly inappropriate. In Romeo and Juliet, for example, the dying Mercutio says: "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man." Over in France, the Marquis de Biévre managed to get an italicized pun into every single line of his never-acted play Vercingétorix (1770).

Perhaps the pun has fallen into disrepute because punning is so often an end in itself — a vehicle for verbal showing off that is ultimately pointless, like: "A cat ate some cheese, and waited for a mouse with baited breath." Or "Some people don't like food going to waist." A good pun should make a point, not be the point. Such verbal dexterity comes into its own in newspapers and magazines: in a headline or title, the pun must be relevant to the subject, tone, or angle of the piece. It must give information in a witty way, summarizing the article and hooking the reader.

So, a report on a weekend in London with small kids is Capital Punishment. A defense of huge advances for novelists is titled Making Improper Advances: Quite the Opposite. Waist Disposal heralds a feature on corsets, Mailstrom an editorial on the problems of uncontrollably burgeoning email, and Let's Have the Marshall Rather Than the Martial Plan, an opinion piece on American foreign policy. Girl Torque reviews the Mazda MX-5, which "Macho pundits have written off as a 'girlie' car. The more fool them. It's sleek, superbly engineered and a joy to drive." The New Beet Generation is subtitled "Rescued from the ignominy of school dinners and pub salads, beetroot has finally found favour among fashionable foodies." Hard Sell to Hard Cell for Mayor reported on the imprisonment of the mayor of Marbella for bribery and corruption.

The vicissitudes of Jesús Gil bring us to an inspired cross-language pun. An English magazine published in southern Spain hit on Up Gil, Down Gil to chronicle the "the rise and fall of the mayor of Marbella." This pun hinges on the amusement afforded by the English pronunciation of the Spanish velar fricative g as the plain aspirate h and the pronunciation by Spaniards of English h as the Spanish fricative g. Another neat one, this time from the Russian: Mir Mortals in Outer Space reviews a book about the Mir space station.

Sidebars, subtitles, leads, and picture captions provide further opportunities for extended punning. The term originally used to designate the colored marker pen was requisitioned by Observer fashion writers for a feature on felt: Felt Tips: "Felt can be sleek, soft, sensuous ... and deeply loved." The sidebar is most apt: Heart Felt. Distilling the Wisdom of Generations is how Barcelona Business titled an interview in which "a brandy baroness shares some trade secrets." A sidebar titled Making Your Marc was doubtless irresistible.

But puns are not the only form of wit. A play on words is a pun, playing with words is verbal wit or dexterity at large and includes puns. One may play with the sound, spelling, form, grammar, and many other aspects of words. Sports writers surely rubbed their hands in glee when sprinter Raymond Salami beat Linford Christie. Linford Sliced As Salami Wins grinned the Observer. Salami, moreover, was a "sprinter [Christie] was expected to make mincemeat out of."

One of the most fruitful devices for achieving a humorous, ironic, dramatic, critical — or bathetic — effect is the paragram, formerly known as paranomasia. This is made by altering a word, or sometimes only a letter, in a common expression or literary allusion, with well-known titles of songs, books, plays and films, quotes, proverbs, clichés, and set phrases all providing first-class raw material. Possibilities seem inexhaustible, from the New Age (Handle with Prayer is a book about spirituality) to the sex-drenched world of hard rock, where alongside classics of the genre like Megadeth's Rust in Peace and AC/DC's Shoot To Thrill, the more literary allusion is not unknown, namely, Aerosmith's Lord of the Thighs.

Once again, newspapers and magazines are excellent showcases for paragrams. It is only fitting, of course, that Shakespeare should be an all-time favorite. After all, in King Henry IV, Part I, he actually has the father of Hotspur remark, when he learns of his son's tragic death, that Hotspur is now Coldspur. So, when the Times reported that tests on 210 skeletons dug up on the site of an old sanatorium had corroborated the written records of TB deaths, how else could it head the item but: TB or not TB, That is a Question Answered. Similarly, a feature on the increasing number of Denominación de Origen wine-producing areas in Spain (the equivalent of the French appélation controlée) was entitled To D.O. or Not to D.O. by the Costa del Sol English-language mag Lookout. Shakespeare is no stranger to the local shopping center, either. A local paper reported that an outdoor pursuits shop in Sheffield, UK, had advertised its January sale with a sign saying: Now is the discount of our winter tents. Wonderful word play, too, for a report on the Ford takeover of Volvo: Ford Not To Bury Volvo But To Raise It.

Jane Austen is another writer with a pretty high profile, thanks perhaps to the film of the book. Lens and Lensibility was what Q Magazine came up with for a report on camcorders. Ms Austen has hit alternative healing, too, with Scent and Scentuality (a chapter in a book on aromatherapy). Oscar Wilde provides the title of choice for a Guardian article on Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt. The Pitfalls of Being Brad asks whether "this toy boy is past his sell-by date," while a series of photos is captioned The Pitt Parade.

Descartes is yet another popular choice. I Think, Therefore I Scram heads a feature on the "nouveau brain drain." Descartes, by the way, is also shopping center material. A few years ago, a Barcelona design store emblazoned on its carrier bags the slogan I Shop, Therefore I Am (Compro, luego existo). And Look Back On Ingres must have been unavoidable for a review of an exhibition of portraits by Ingres at the National Gallery in London. Song titles are good for grabbing the attention of the jaded reader. The Observer travel feature Chairways to Heaven tells us with another neat pun that "Bolivia tops the world when it comes to the highest ski lift." I had no idea, honestly.

Film titles provide rich pickings for paragram hunters, but surely it's too good to be true that the London restaurant Wiz really should turn out to be seriously eccentric, making possible a review in the Observer Magazine titled an analysis-defying but instantly recognizable The Oddity of Wiz. Se non è vero è ben trovato.

The staple of the paragram is the saying, proverb, cliché, or set phrase. Fillers, Hit or Myth? asked UK Writers News magazine. Where Milk and Money Flow heads a Guardian report on purchasing, distribution, and marketing in dairy companies. The same paper's Jobs and Money section came up with the cover headline Bouncing Back: Life After Debt announcing a feature on how to deal with business failure. A discussion of difficulties faced by new bands is entitled Soon British Bands will be Simply Dead Says Mick Hucknall. Readers are presumed to know that Hucknall is lead singer of the band Simply Red. On the subject of musicians, my personal favorite is Q Magazine's All Cisterns Go!, subheaded "Why is George Michael reliving his toilet trauma in his new video?" (referring to the singer's arrest for lewd conduct in a Beverly Hills toilet).

And now another personal favorite, a hilarious pictographic juxtaposition: For a Wig and a Prayer, subtitled "life on the kosher catwalk," headed Cover Magazine's report on how an Israeli ad agency is targeting the Jewish ultra-orthodox market with models that "aren't strictly pretty."

Admittedly, the dividing lines between true wit, cleverness, slickness, and groan-induction are fuzzy indeed and subject to personal taste. In Clothes' Quarters, a feature on walk-in wardrobes, the Times Magazine tells us "it's time to pursue the American dream, and find our clothing a room of its own." In one issue of Delta Airlines' inflight magazine, Swede Tooth gets its teeth into Swedish pastries while Pop and Circumstance pulls the cork on "the only liquid that may authentically call itself 'champagne.'" Mall is Beautiful was the obvious choice for a report on the Bluewater development, the "largest retail and leisure complex ever seen in Europe." The teeming ranks of rhyming words and set phrases in English are further swollen by names and foreign words. Vaughan Again heads a review of new recordings of Vaughan Williams's symphonies, and Strauss of Ill Repute one of a book on Richard Strauss. Meanwhile, the Guardian came up with Schtick at Heart for a review of Bernard Malamud's stories of Jewish pain and loss. And Raison d'Etro, for a fashion feature on the Italian design house Etro — of course.

Absenta Makes the Heart Grow Fonder was how The Barcelona Metropolitan titled a feature on the forbidden absinthe, absenta in Catalan. This bilingual paragram-pun would have worked even better with the original French. But a paragram on the title of Jeanette Winterson's well-known novel must have utterly mystified readers of Barcelona Business unfamiliar with the Catalan language. Pineapples Are Not The Only Fruit discusses the consequences of the "fem pinya" ethos for business in Catalonia. "Fem pinya," which means let's make a closely knit group or clique, as the article explains, is a rallying cry for nationalists, industrialists, and guilds. Hence the pineapple paragram. However, strictly speaking, a pineapple is a pinya d'Amèrica or tropical. Pinya alone is a pinecone; a group of closely linked people or things; the carefully structured clump of people who form the base of a human castle or tower. But let's not spoil the ... fun.

As the British glossy Red shows, the well-nigh unfathomable slang of the two major varieties of English is good for a pun or two. America's Bizarre Sex Laws: Going Down for Going Down trumpeted the cover, heralding the article A Blow Job For Freedom, on "the crime you can literally go down for." "A blow job may have brought the President to his knees, but in 15 American states it could land you in jail," the report kicks off. Who needs other languages when our own yields such delights?

Valerie Collins