A Good/Bad Pun

Aren’t we supposed to say puns are bad if they’re good?

The last post was all work, so this post is all play.

Okay, let’s go for two:

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Sandhi is a Sanskrit word meaning “a putting together.” We get our word (ice cream) “sundae” from “sandhi.” Technically, the word refers to the effect that the end of one word has on the beginning of the next. This happens all the time in Sanskrit, I’m told, and sometimes in spoken English. (I suppose the choice of whether to use “a” or “an” before a word could be attributed to sandhi.)

Anyway, here’s a good example of using sandhi to make a joke.

You do know the scout motto, right?

Idioms are phrases in a language not meant to be taken literally. When we don’t understand something, we might say “It’s Greek to me,” whereas in Germany you’d say (in German) “It’s a Bohemian village to me.”

Here are some idioms whose meanings depend on context:

What are your favorite idioms? Feel free to put some in the comments.

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.

I don’t think I’ve run into this one before. I can’t say it’s wrong, but it doesn’t save you much. Last panel:

Limericks are poetry, right?

I discovered this in my files back from 2014! It’s a cheap lesson in poetic meter. I’ll let you figure it out.

A forgetful old gasman named Dieter
Went poking around his gas heater.
Touched a leak with his light
And blew out of sight!
And, as everyone who knows anything about poetry can tell you, he also ruined the meter.

And here are two of my favorites:

A limerick writer named Drew
Always ended his poems on line two…

A limerick writer, a Hun,

Feel free to send me your worst in the comments.

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.