“‘I enjoy painting’,” Tom said easily” requires you to know that painters’ canvases rest on an easel. So “‘I dropped my toothpaste’, a crestfallen Tom said” is an allusion to Crest toothpaste, which would make no sense if you were not familiar with the brand. Such double meanings make the joke more enjoyable. Not having a shopping list when you arrive at the store is not the same as being listless, and to appreciate “sternly” you need to know the word stern also means the back of a ship, as well as a person’s strict manner. “Get to the back of the ship!” Tom said sternly. Thus “I forgot what I needed at the store,” Tom confessed listlessly. The more complicated the pun, the funnier the allusion is. The adverbial pun makes a routine statement cleverer and, therefore, more amusing. Get it? In the examples above, “swiftly” relates to “hurry”, a crab is a shellfish, when you strike oil it gushes from the ground, a loan of money must usually be repaid with interest, thermostats regulate room temperature and hot dogs taste better with relish. “I love hot dogs,” exclaimed Tom with relish. “The thermostat is set too high,” complained Tom heatedly. “I’d like my money back, and then some,” said Tom with interest. “Pass me the shellfish,” said Tom crabbily. Jokes inevitably began to be made about this style, as in “‘We must hurry,’ said Tom Swiftly.” The adverb, in other words, contains the pun. Since adverbs were excessively attached to dialogue in the stories, to avoid repetition, impart colourful variety to the narrative and teach the books’ young readers new words, this was widely noticed as a distinctive feature of the Tom Swift books. So instead of the typical “‘We must find out who did this,’ said Tom”, the author would write, “‘We must find out who did this,’ Tom muttered desperately.” The author went to great lengths to avoid the standard formula “he said” or “said Tom” when reporting something the characters uttered, tossing in an adverb to embellish the routine word “said”. The name comes from an American boys’ fiction genre, the Tom Swift series of books, which were similar to the Hardy Boys series of children’s adventure stories. A “Tom Swifty” is a phrase in which a pun is used in reporting speech. But there is a particular genre of puns that has acquired a name of its own. In an August column, we discussed puns, which involve a play on words for humorous effect.
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