An adult and a child seen from behind on a sofa, sharing a well-thumbed joke and riddle book in warm lamplight
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.
doodlepun

WORDPLAY, EXPLAINED

One word,
two meanings.

READ IT twice

  • Set up one meaning
  • Swap in another
  • Enjoy the groan
  • Ambiguity, on purpose

How do you make a band stand? Take away the chairs.

A pun sets you up to read a word one way, then hands you the other. That small double take is the whole trick, and research suggests it is also good practice for reading between the lines.

Updated

Spot the type

THE SHORT ANSWER

Expectation,
then a surprise.

A pun only works if you spot
both meanings, one after the other.

THE TRICK

Two meanings, one word

A pun exploits several meanings of a word, or words that sound alike. 'Band stand' is a structure and a band standing up: the riddle runs on the gap.

Spot the type

THE BRAIN

A two-step joke

A University of Windsor study suggests the left hemisphere handles the language first, then the right hemisphere kicks in to reveal the second meaning.

How it works

READING

Riddles as practice

In Sussex studies, children who could explain riddles tended to understand stories better, and riddle training improved reading comprehension.

See the research

A QUICK PUN CHECK

What kind of pun
is it?

Pick a type of pun to see how it works. The bar shows how well that type survives being said out loud rather than read.

Pun check

Choose a type
Sounds the sameHomophonic

Two words sound alike but mean different things, like profit and prophet. Made for saying out loud.

Spelled the sameHomographic

Words spelled the same but with different sounds and meanings. These rely on sight more than hearing, so they often work best on the page.

Same spelling and soundHomonymic

One word, two meanings, like lie as an untruth and the lie of a golf ball. Works spoken or written.

Words split differentlyRebracketing

The sounds are regrouped into new words: 'no pun in ten did' for 'no pun intended'. It needs to be heard to land.

A picture does the workVisual

An image replaces one meaning, as in heraldry's canting arms, which picture the bearer's name. Nothing to hear at all.

Source: reference entries on the pun and its types (homophonic, homographic, homonymic, morphological and visual puns).

Types and examples follow the standard categories used in reference works on puns. Some puns fit more than one type.

TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING

Riddles and reading,
in the research.

Two experiments from the University of Sussex
on ambiguity and children's comprehension.

29 children

Children aged 8 to 11 who explained 16 riddles

For riddles needing high language awareness, recalling and explaining them was significantly related to reading comprehension, even allowing for age and reading accuracy. How funny children found them was unrelated.

EXPERIMENT 1 · SUSSEX

7 sessions

Riddle and word-game training for 7 to 8 year-olds

After seven sessions, trained children, both good and poor comprehenders, improved in comprehension significantly more than control groups given humorous material without ambiguity.

EXPERIMENT 2 · SUSSEX

The findings were presented to the British Psychological Society's annual conference in Brighton in March 1998. Researchers noted that children's reading progress tends to drop at around seven to nine years.

FOUR WAYS TO PLAY

Make the groan
do some work.

Two children's hands at a classroom table, one pointing at a laptop screen and the other holding a pencil over a worksheet
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

None of this needs a lesson plan. The Sussex work was about noticing that words can mean two things, and talking about why a riddle is funny.

  1. Ask why it is funny

    Explaining a riddle, not just laughing at it, was what linked to reading comprehension in the Sussex study.

  2. Find both meanings

    Name the two senses out loud: a paper shop as a shop made of paper, and a shop that sells newspapers.

  3. Make one up

    Pick a word with two meanings and build a question around the less obvious one. Children in the trials went on to invent their own.

  4. Keep it a game, not a test

    The lead researcher worried that parents might use riddles as a test. Keep the tone light.

INSIDE THE DOUBLE TAKE

Prime one meaning,
reveal the other.

A Victorian bandstand in an English park on a sunny afternoon, with empty deckchairs scattered on the grass around it
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

In the University of Windsor study, published in the journal Laterality, people saw words linked to puns in one half of their visual field, and reaction times showed which brain hemisphere was leading.

The researchers suggest the sentence primes one meaning in the language-dominant left hemisphere, and the right hemisphere then supplies the unexpected one: expectation plus incongruity, the basic formula of humour.

Questions

Questions people ask

What exactly is a pun?

A form of wordplay that exploits the multiple meanings of a word, or words that sound similar, for a humorous or rhetorical effect. The formal term is paronomasia.

Is a pun the same as a malapropism?

No. A malapropism is a mistaken word in place of the right one. A pun deliberately uses expressions that have more than one reasonable meaning.

Why do puns make people groan?

Puns divide opinion, and critics have called them the lowest form of wit. The groan may be part of the fun: you were led one way, then caught out by the second meaning.

Can riddles really help children read?

In University of Sussex studies, children who could explain riddles that relied on language ambiguity had better reading comprehension, and riddle training improved comprehension more than humour without ambiguity.

Are puns only for jokes?

No. Reference works note that puns have long been used as a serious poetic device and as a memorable rhetorical tool in titles, slogans and names.

Sources

Where the facts come from

  1. Scientific American: Your pun-divided attention, how the brain processes wordplay
  2. University of Sussex: The role of linguistic ambiguity in understanding and improving children's comprehension (CSRP 296)
  3. University of Sussex media release, 26 March 1998: Riddles help children to read
  4. Tes: Why did the psychologist ask a riddle?
  5. Wikipedia: Pun

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