Types of verbal humor

By Ana Paula Lopes

RIDDLES• When is a door not a door?• When it's ajar (a jar).• • What's black and white and red (read) all over?• A newspaper.• • What's brown and sounds like a bell?• Dung.• • What's brown and sticky?• A stick.

RIDDLES• Why is six afraid of seven?• Because seven ate (eight) nine.• • What is yours but your friend uses more than you do?• Your name.• • There were two cats, 1 2 3 cat and un deux trois cat,

they had a swimming race from England to France. Who won?

• 1 2 3 Cat because Un deux trois quatre cinq (un deux trois cat sank)

ANECDOTES

• Cary Grant is said to have been reluctant to reveal his age to the public, having played the youthful lover for more years than would have been appropriate. One day, while he was sorting out some business with his agent, a telegram arrived from a journalist who was desperate to learn how old the actor was. It read: HOW OLD CARY GRANT? Grant, who happened to open it himself, immediately cabled back: OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?

ANECDOTES

• Another anecdote is the tale of Harry Smirvnock. Mr. Smirvnock was going to a club when a cop sirened him to stop along the side. He stopped, but the cop car didn't. Instead, the cop car continued along the highway. The cop later realized that the Toyota Camry that was expected to stop along the side of the road was actually another different car. "Thats how many damn toyata's there are. Jesus." the cop said.

ANECDOTES

• The violinist Dave Swarbrick was amused one day to find his obituary printed in the Telegraph. Apprised of the mistake, the paper printed the following retraction: "Mr Swarbrick, who was reported dead in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, is recovering well."

LIMERICKS

The limerick packs laughs anatomical In space that is quite economical, But the good ones I've seen So seldom are clean, And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

LIMERICKS

There was a young man from Japan Whose limericks never would scan. When asked why this was, He replied "It's because I always try to fit as many syllables into the last

line as ever possibly I can.

BLOOPERS

“Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.”

Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign.

BLOOPERS

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?

Answer: “I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever,”

Miss Alabama’s Heather Whitestone in the 1994 Miss USA contest, who was later selected as Miss America 1995.

BLOOPERS

“Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.”

Mariah Carey

PUNS

• "Thanks for the brake", a sign on the back of buses in the Denver Regional Transportation District and in certain cities in British Columbia (Such as Victoria and Nanaimo)

• (Brake: pun on "break") • • K-9, a designation for military dogs or police dogs • (A play on "canine", patterned after other

military codes such as G-2.)

PUNS• "Funny bone" is the popular name for a sensitive

exposed nerve located where it joins at the elbow.

• (Robert Hendrickson believes the name is due to an intentional or accidental confusion between "humerus" and "humorous".[

• • "There is nothing punny about bad puns." —

original source unknown. • (Punny: play on "funny", in the idiomatic phrase

"There is nothing funny about…".)

PUNS

• "The pun is mightier than the word." — original source unknown

• (Pun and word: plays on "pen" and "sword", in the saying "The pen is mightier than the sword".)

• "A pun is its own reword." — Dance Drier, British comedian

• (Reword: pun on "reward", from the saying "Virtue is its own reward".)

PUNS

• "Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted." — Fred Allen

• (Quoted: pun on "quartered", an old form of capital punishment.)

• "Immanuel doesn't pun; he Kant." — Oscar Wilde

• (Kant: play on "can't", in the name of philosopher Immanuel Kant)

JOKES

• A barber, a bald man and an absent minded professor take a journey together. They have to camp overnight, so decide to take turns watching the luggage. When it's the barber's turn, he gets bored, so amuses himself by shaving the head of the professor. When the professor is woken up for his shift, he feels his head, and says "How stupid is that barber? He's woken up the bald man instead of me.