A Pun can be Fun

I like to use humor as much as possible when I communicate in my personal life and my professional life too. I think it helps people feel more relaxed and interested, especially when they’re improving English and speaking with me for 60 minutes!

In past blog posts I’ve written about different types of speaking through words such as onomatopoeic words, shape words, and today I'd like to talk about puns. Puns are definitely a fun way to enrich your vocabulary because their use always involves humor and double meanings. They’re like little word games because they either use one word that has two meanings, or two words that sound almost the same. Here are some examples of puns:

My friend asked me to carve a sculpture out of a large rock. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to make! In this pun, the word "hardest" has two meanings: 1. most difficult, 2. firm, solid, unbreakable.

What is green and sings? Answer: Elvis Parsley

The first pun contains one word with two meanings. The second pun is an example of two words that sound almost the same (In this case, a word and a name: parsley and Presley).

Puns can be confusing if you don’t know the word, so to appreciate the humor of puns you need to understand their double meanings, thus growing your vocabulary more and more and, hopefully, having a laugh too.