paronomasia

Definition:

Punning, playing with words. See also: pun.

Etymology:

From the Greek, "word-shunting"

Examples:

• "Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight . . ."
  (Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night")



• "Look deep into our ryes."
  (advertising slogan for Wigler's Bakery products)



• "Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends."
  (credited to Tom Waits)



• "A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handyman with a sense of humus."
  (E.B. White, "The Practical Farmer")



• "Get that bird a glass of water--he’s perched!"
  (Magilla Gorilla on Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law)



• I used to be a tap dancer until I fell in the sink.



• "I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it."
  (Groucho Marx)



• "Well, I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
  (Tom Waits on Fernwood2Night, 1977)



• "Dishgusted, dishgusted, dishgusted."
  (Commercial for Lux dishwashing liquid)



• "We're tobacco men . . . not medicine men. Old Gold cures just one thing. The World's Best Tobacco."
  (advertising slogan for Old Gold cigarettes)



• "Peace is much more precious than a piece of land."
  (Anwar al-Sadat, speech in Cairo on March 8, 1978)



• "Don't be a tosser."
  (New South Wales anti-litter campaign)



• "Oh look--it has B-12 in it. I didn’t know that B-4."
  (television commercial for Kelloggs Bran)



• "Your children need your presence more than your presents."
  (Jesse Jackson)



• "Horse Lovers are Stable People."
  (Saying on a pillow in the Potpourri gift catalog)



• "Every bubble's passed its fizzical"
  (advertising slogan for Corona)

Pronunciation: par-oh-no-MAZE-jah

Also Known As: pun