33
These are puns on the names of tourist agencies and operators.
Ways no gaze could follow has the double meaning:
routes that go beyond the horizon (or otherwise out of sight);
routes that are not available as package tours from Henry Gaze & Sons, nor found in their publication Gaze's Tourists Gazette.
Unspoiled of Cook has the double meaning:
never ...
26
The Kentucky Age for 10th February 1857 contains a short story which opens as follows:
A celebrated wit once said he had found out a patent “slip button,” so that when a bore laid hold of him, and was detaining him with a long story, he had only to slip the button, leaving it in the bore’s fingers, and make his escape.
The contrivance was an ingenious and ...
26
It took me a second to get it; you have to say it out loud. When you do, you might hear a bit of a familiar melody come to mind.
He's playing off the lyrics to George M. Cohan's "Give My Regards to Broadway":
Give my regards to Broadway
Remember me to Herald Square
Tell all the gang at Forty-Second Street
That I will soon be there
A full story ...
22
The phrase comes from a story by humorist Will Stanton that appeared in the May 1971 issue of Reader's Digest. The narrator claims that he is subject to "a kind of slip-of-the-ear," leading to his mishearing things. This is the first example he gives:
I was standing next to a woman at one party recently, not paying much attention to what she was ...
16
It is a pun on ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’, a song written as a morale booster during the Second World War by Hubert Gregg, but made famous by Flanagan and Allan as an expression of pride in London.
The song can be heard on You Tube if the Apple Music version on the Songfacts link above isn’t accessible.
14
It was a 'knock-knock' joke in the 1960s, when everyone knew the song.
Person 1: Knock knock.
Person 2: Who's there?
Person 1: M.A.B. is a big horse.
Person 2: M.A.B. is a big horse who?
Person 1: [Sings] A-maybe it's a-because I'm a Londoner. . .
13
This is called a feghoot: a story that builds up to a pun for its punchline.
Asimov seems to have had a fondness for feghoots, as he did this in several stories:
"Loint of Paw", about a criminal who uses the statute of limitations and a time machine to his advantage, has the punchline "a niche in time, saves Stein".
"Battle Hymn" has "Mars says yes!" (for ...
7
It's a double pun on immaculate conception and general. The Roman Catholic dogma of immaculate conception says that Mary is free from original sin right from the moment of her conception.
The narrator is saying that during his father's wartime absences, he would come up with an idealized image of him. This is a conception in the sense of "a complex ...
5
tl;dr More's wordplay both creates a world and undercuts it. It allows More to tell an entirely plausible story with a straight face while simultaneously signaling that the story is false. It forms part of an intricate strategy of "self-fashioning and self-cancellation" (Greenblatt, p. 12) whereby More raises specific and dangerous questions about ...
5
It's entirely possible that Thomas Nashe wrote this passage, which would account for its dated references.
Hunting deer was a sport for the upper class in Shakespeare's England, with its own terminology. A one-year-old deer was a buck, at two a pricket, at three a sorrell, at four a soare. The passage has a little fun by confusing sore and soare, then soare ...
4
This is not an obscenity about "climaxing" or "passing gas." It's a phonetic rendering of what was then spoken English. For instance, the sexual meaning of "come" is a modern usage dating back to the 1970s. etymonline.com/word/cum?
The bolded text, "and so was cumfarting, eading, and abatting," reads in modern English, "and so was comforting, aiding, and ...
4
In my own multiple (and recent) readings of the complete novels and stories of Sherlock Holmes, I see Holmes noted for a direct, rather dry style of verbal delivery. Watson, the narrator in this passage, has a more romantic cast on his interpretation of events, but also tends to stick to the facts, as he sees them.
I can't rule out the possibility of "...
3
"Sore" also means "deer". From "Sport on Dartmoor", 1895, reprinted in Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art:
The Fallow-deer, now a much more favourite animal for the table, but seldom hunted except in the New Forest, was a Fawn the first year,
Pricket the second year,
Sorel the ...
3
There's definitely an argument made that you can interpret it that way, and I think there's good reason too. From the lyrics, there seems to be an emphasis of "my way or the highway" sort of mentality with Elphaba, and her her yearning for independence if it means freedom and truth is reflected numerously in this song. For example, at the beginning ...
3
INTRODUCTION TO THE CHINESE NAME
The American-Based StackExchange Network ranks below Quora in Alexa. Quora receives a lot of traffic, including traffic from native Chinese speakers with professional competency in at least written English and fluently bilingual heritage speakers. StackExchange, on the other hand, is kind of a niche website, so the ...
2
Given that MacDonald was a proud Scotsman and that he often used the Scots language/dialect in his books, a perusal of a dictionary may prove useful. Here is part of what The Dictionary of the Scots Language has on keck:
[O.Sc. kek(k)il(l), v. = 1., from c.1513, = 2., a.1550. A freq. form from Keck, v.3 Cf. also Mid. Du. Kekelen, to cackle.] (online, https:...
2
The essay Jesting in Earnest by Daniel Gabelman, included in the book Re-Embroidering the Robe: Faith, Myth and Literary Creation since 1850 seems to imply the pun in the name may be "Copy Kant". Here's the relevant passage.
Kopy-Keck, perhaps a caricature of the Metaphysical Society and their misapplication of Kant and the idealists, believes the ...
2
Below is the text as given in the First Folio:
The prayfull Princesse pearst and prickt
a prettie pleasing Pricket,
Some say a Sore, but not a sore,
till now made sore with shooting.
The Dogges did yell, put ell to Sore,
then Sorell iumps from thicket:
Or Pricket-sore, or else Sorell,
the people fall a hooting.
If Sore be sore, then ell to Sore,
makes ...
2
I think that the Sherlock Holmes canon is, in fact, loaded with puns. Two of my favorites are:
In "The Engineer's Thumb", the word "sponge" is used first to describe the engineer's castrated hand and then for Watson's action:
There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had ...
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