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Word play is a literary technique
Literary technique

A literary technique or literary device is an identifiable rule of thumb, convention or structure that is employed in literature and storytelling....
 in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work. Pun
Pun

A pun, or paronomasia, is a form of word play that deliberately exploits ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humour or rhetorical effect....
s, phonetic mix-ups such as spoonerism
Spoonerism

A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate word play in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched . It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner , Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency....
s, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetoric
Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
al 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
Spelling

Spelling is the writing of a word or words with the necessary Letter and diacritics present in an accepted standard order. It is one of the elements of orthography and a prescriptive element of language....
 and sound-based word play abound in both alphabetically and non-alphabetically written literature (eg.






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Word play is a literary technique
Literary technique

A literary technique or literary device is an identifiable rule of thumb, convention or structure that is employed in literature and storytelling....
 in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work. Pun
Pun

A pun, or paronomasia, is a form of word play that deliberately exploits ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humour or rhetorical effect....
s, phonetic mix-ups such as spoonerism
Spoonerism

A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate word play in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched . It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner , Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency....
s, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetoric
Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
al 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
Spelling

Spelling is the writing of a word or words with the necessary Letter and diacritics present in an accepted standard order. It is one of the elements of orthography and a prescriptive element of language....
 and sound-based word play abound in both alphabetically and non-alphabetically written literature (eg. Chinese
Chinese literature

Chinese literature extends back thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature fictional novel that arose during the Ming Dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese....
).

The most wonderful examples of telling character names occur in the comic books of Asterix
Asterix

The Adventures of Asterix is a List of Asterix volumes of France comic strips written by Ren? Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo . The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on 29 October 1959....
. See Humour in Asterix
Humour in Asterix

The humour encountered in the Asterix comics is typically French, often centering on puns, caricatures, and tongue-in-cheek stereotypes of contemporary European nations and List of regions in France....
.

Most writers engage in word play to some extent, but certain writers are particularly adept or committed to word play at length. Shakespeare's "quibbles" have made him a noted punster. P.G. Wodehouse was also hailed, by The Times
The Times

The Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register.The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International....
 as a "comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce" for his ingenious wordplay. James Joyce
James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Ireland expatriate author of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ....
, author of Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris....
 and Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a work of Comic novel by Irish literature James Joyce, which is recognised for its difficulty for the reader and its experimental style....
, is another noted word-player. For example, Joyce's phrase "they were yung and easily freudened" clearly conveys the meaning "young and easily frightened", but it also makes puns on the names of two famous psychoanalysts
Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behaviour....
, Jung
Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of Analytical psychology. Jung's approach to psychology has been influential in the field of depth psychology and in counterculture movements across the globe....
 and Freud
Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalysis of psychology. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of Psychological repression and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for curing psychopathology through dialogue...
.

Other writers and entertainers closely identified with word play include:

  • Lewis Carroll
    Lewis Carroll

    Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll , was an England author, mathematics, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer....
    , in his Alice
    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a novel written by England author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a Rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures....
      books, among other works
  • Forrest J Ackerman
    Forrest J Ackerman

    Forrest J Ackerman , or Mr. Science Fiction, was for over seven decades one of science fiction's staunchest spokesmen and promoters. Ackerman was a Los Angeles, California-based magazine editor, writer, literary agent, a founder of science fiction fandom and possibly the world's most avid collector of genre books and movie memorabilia....
    , magazine editor, coined "sci-fi"
  • The Apocryphal
    Biblical apocrypha

    The biblical apocrypha are Books of the Bible published in an edition of the Bible whose Biblical canon the publisher either rejects or doubts....
     book of Susanna has elements of word play in its original Greek.
  • Piers Anthony
    Piers Anthony

    Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob is an English American author in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony....
     in his Xanth novels
  • G. K. Chesterton
    G. K. Chesterton

    Gilbert Keith Chesterton was one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction....
  • Homer
    Homer

    Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
     in his famous work "Odyssey"
  • Brian P. Cleary
    Brian P. Cleary

    Brian P. Cleary, is an United States humorist, poet, and author. He is best-known for his books that explore grammar in humorous ways written for grade-school children....
     in his Rhyme and PUNishment; Adventures in Wordplay
  • Emo Philips
    Emo Philips

    Emo Philips is an United States entertainer and comedian born in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove. Much of his standup comedy stems from the use of paraprosdokians and garden path sentences spoken in a wandering falsetto tone of voice and a confused, childlike delivery of his material to produce the intended comic timing in a manner invok...
    , stand-up comedian, revered for his paraprosdokian
    Paraprosdokian

    A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe the first part....
    s and garden-path jokes
    Garden path sentence

    Garden path sentences are used in psycholinguistics to illustrate that human beings process language one word at a time. The name refers to the saying "to be led up the garden path", meaning "to be misled"....
  • Carrottop occasionally uses puns to work with his props
  • Willard R. Espy
    Willard R. Espy

    Willard Richardson Espy was a United States of America Editing, philologist, writer, and poet. He is particularly remembered for his anthology of light verse and wordplay, An Almanac of Words at Play, and its two sequels....
    , who collected several anthologies of word play
  • Jasper Fforde
    Jasper Fforde

    Jasper Fforde is an England novelist. Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for his Thursday Next novels, although he has written another series, the Nursery Crime Stories series....
  • Jack Kerouac
    Jack Kerouac

    Jack Kerouac was an American author, poet and Painting. Alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, he is considered a pioneer of the Beat Generation....
     (in On the Road
    On the Road

    On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957 in literature. It is a largely Autobiography work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America....
     and more so in Visions of Cody
    Visions of Cody

    Visions of Cody is a novel by Jack Kerouac, perhaps his most stylistically free and varied. It was written in 1951-1952, and though not published in its entirety until 1973, it had by then achieved an underground reputation....
    )
  • John Lennon
    John Lennon

    John Winston Ono Lennon, Order of the British Empire was an English Rock music musician, singer, songwriter, artist, and peace activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles....
     (In His Own Write
    In His Own Write

    In His Own Write is a book from 1964 by John Lennon. The book consists of short stories and line drawings, often surreal and always nonsensical....
     and A Spaniard In the Works
    A Spaniard in the Works

    A Spaniard in the Works is a book from 1965 by John Lennon. The book consists of nonsensical stories and drawings similar to the style of his previous book, 1964's In His Own Write....
    ) ("The Nasties Are Booming Us!")
  • Max Collins
    Max Collins

    James Maxwell Stuart Collins III is the lead singer and bass guitarist of Eve 6. He authored most of the band's songs. He met lead guitarist Jon Siebels in high school, and the two formed a band....
    , lead vocalist and lyricist of Eve 6
    Eve 6

    Eve 6 is a rock band from Southern California who was most well known for their hit "Inside Out " and the slow anthem "Here's to the Night ". They disbanded in 2004 and reunited with two of the three original members in October 2007....
  • Marilyn Manson
    Marilyn Manson

    Marilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
  • Dave Mustaine
    Dave Mustaine

    David Scott Mustaine is the lead guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist for the heavy metal music band Megadeth. Mustaine grew up in various Southern California suburbs....
  • Vladimir Nabokov
    Vladimir Nabokov

    Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Multilingualism Russian-American novelist and short story writer.Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian language, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist....
  • Flann O'Brien
    Flann O'Brien

    Brian O'Nolan was an Irish novelist and satirist, best known for his novels An B?al Bocht, At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman written under the pen name Flann O'Brien....
  • Van Dyke Parks
    Van Dyke Parks

    Van Dyke Parks is an United States composer, arranger, producer, musician, singer, and actor. His work spans six decades, and he has worked with luminaries from Grace Kelly to the Beach Boys and the Byrds, and recently, Loudon Wainwright III and Joanna Newsom....
  • Thomas Pynchon
    Thomas Pynchon

    Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American literature based in New York City, noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English studies degree from Cornell University....
  • George Bernard Shaw
    George Bernard Shaw

    George Bernard Shaw, was an Irish people playwright.Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays....


Plays can enter common usage as neologism
Neologism

A neologism is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language . Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event....
s.

Word play is closely related to word game
Word game

Word games and puzzles are generally engaged as a source of Entertainment, but they have been found to serve a very useful and progressive Education purpose as well....
s, that is, games in which the point is manipulating words. See also language game
Language game

A language game is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear. Language games are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their conversations from others....
 for a linguist's variation. The Hungarian term for wordplay, occasionally used in the circle for its diaeres, is Szójáték.

See also

  • List of forms of word play
    List of forms of word play

    This is a list of techniques used in word play with Wikipedia articles.Technique that involve the phonetic values of words* Mondegreen: a mishearing of a phrase as a homophone or near-homophone that has as a result acquired a new meaning....
  • Etymology
    Etymology

    Etymology is the study of the roots and history of words; and how their form and meaning have changed over time.In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time....
  • Word game
    Word game

    Word games and puzzles are generally engaged as a source of Entertainment, but they have been found to serve a very useful and progressive Education purpose as well....
  • Figure of speech
    Figure of speech

    A figure of speech, sometimes termed a rhetoric, or locution, is a word or phrase that departs from straightforward, literal language. Figures of speech are often used and crafted for emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity....
    • Metaphor
      Metaphor

      Metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is a figure of speech that compares two or more things without using the words "like" or "as." More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second object in some way....
    • Simile
      Simile

      A simile is a figure of speech comparing two unlike things, often introduced with the word "like" or "as". Even though similes and metaphors are both forms of comparison, similes allow the two ideas to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas metaphors seek to equate two ideas despite their differences....


External links