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Phrase: Play on words
If you are a male, the hardest thing to understand in a foreign language is a female.
The second hardest thing to understand in a foreign tongue, which applies to both men and women, is a joke.
I’m not going to talk about women here because I’ll only get myself into trouble.
Therefore, I will discuss jokes and, in particular, one form of a joke – the play on words or the pun.
A play on words humorously uses similar-sounding words so that there is more than one meaning implied.
You need to know your vocabulary and be able to read between the lines to get them.
Puns are not often funny enough to make you laugh aloud, but they will make you smile.
I’ll give you some examples by beginning with an easy one.
Santa Claus’ helpers are known as subordinate Clauses.
Get it?
Santa Claus is the boss.
People who work for the boss are subordinates.
In English grammar, we have subordinate clauses.
So, Santa’s helpers are subordinate Clauses with a capital C.
OK, how about this play on words?
After hours of waiting for the bowling alley to open, we finally got the ball rolling.
Get it?
The bowling alley is closed, so you can’t start bowling until it opens.
In bowling, you knock down the pins by rolling the ball down the lane.
To get the ball rolling is an idiom, meaning to begin something.
To get the ball rolling means to start the bowling game and roll the ball down the lane.
It’s funny, right?
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 77.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.