Paronomasia¶
paronomasia · word · validated
A text that displaces a word of a known phrase by one close to it in sound, so that the phrase and its replacement stay audible at once. The checker verifies the displacement, its distance in sound, and how much of the phrase was left standing; whether the phrase is one anybody knows is the writer's claim.
Provenance¶
- Source: George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589)
- Attribution:
reference— attested in a standard reference rather than traced to an origin - Checkability:
source— decidable against the source text it was made from - Attested:
codified— formulated as a rule by a tradition rather than declared by an author
Details¶
- Kind: both
- Languages: en, de, fr
- Requires:
tokens,phonemes - Deterministic: yes
- Also known as: pun, agnomination, prosonomasia, the nicknamer
- In other languages: Paronomasie (de), Paronomase (fr)
Notes¶
Puttenham's own name for it is Prosonomasia, or the Nicknamer, and his example is this row's operation exactly: Claudius Tiberius Nero becomes Caldius Biberius Mero, three whole words displaced by neighbours in sound. Cited to Puttenham rather than to Peacham's Garden of Eloquence, which an earlier draft named and which could not be verified to carry the figure at all — the house rule is to record what is checked.
Scope is bounded by what a pronouncing dictionary can answer, and the bound is narrower than the figure. A displacement is checkable only when the word that lands is itself in the dictionary — bread for Brad, dye for die, French Diminu'tif for diminutif. The blends and compound splices that dominate real punning shop names — Hairitage, Haarmonie, Hairways — put a coined word in that position, and no pack here can pronounce a word it has never seen: all six of those raise MissingCapability, measured. That family is portmanteau, a row of its own — and it turned out to need no phonemes.g2p after all, because a blend splices two words the dictionary already has, so the coinage is checked as a derived form rather than pronounced. ADR 0042 records the measurement that overturned the note this row used to carry. The found pun, which displaces nothing, states no relation between two texts and so is not this row at all.
The generator takes a domain — a trade whose vocabulary should win, from core/domain.py — because which displacement is any good depends almost entirely on whether the word that lands belongs to the shop the sign is going on. Bread Pitt is a bakery; Brand Pitt is nothing. The trades ship in core rather than in a data distribution for ADR 0017's reason: these lists describe the procedure being run, not the language it is run in.
Prompt hint¶
Replace one word of a known phrase with a word close to it in sound, leaving the rest of the phrase untouched.
Parameters¶
| Name | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
max_displacements |
integer | 1 |
How many words of the phrase may be displaced. Above one, the original grows harder to hear behind the pun. |
max_distance |
number | 0.5 |
The furthest a displacement may sound from the word it replaces. |
min_distance |
number | 0.0 |
The closest a displacement may sound to the word it replaces. |
source |
string | — |
The text this one was made from. |
unknown_word |
string | undecidable |
How to read a word absent from the pronouncing dictionary: report it, accept it unchecked, or refuse it. |
Examples¶
bread-pitt¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
Bread Pitt
Parameters: source='Brad Pitt'
Source: constructed example; bread for Brad is one vowel, at distance 0.250
homophone-inside-the-default-band¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
Knead to Know
Parameters: source='Need to Know'
Source: constructed example; knead and need are one pronunciation in CMUdict, so the distance is 0.0 and the default band's floor admits it
unchanged-phrase-states-no-pun¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
Brad Pitt
Parameters: source='Brad Pitt'
Source: constructed counterexample; no_displacement
displacement-past-the-ceiling¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
Pitt Pitt
Parameters: source='Brad Pitt', max_distance=0.25
Source: constructed counterexample; distance_out_of_band. Pitt for Brad shares no phoneme at all, so the distance is 1.000
homophone-below-the-floor¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
Knead to Know
Parameters: source='Need to Know', min_distance=0.2
Source: constructed counterexample; the band has two edges, and a caller asking for a forced pun refuses one that costs nothing
two-words-displaced¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
Bread Pit
Parameters: source='Brad Pitt'
Source: constructed counterexample; unrecoverable. pit and pitt are one pronunciation, so this displaces two words rather than one
coined-surface-is-unresolvable¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
British Hairways
Parameters: source='British Airways'
Source: constructed counterexample; the measured bound on this row. Hairways is in no pronouncing dictionary, so the displacement cannot be measured and is reported rather than guessed at. This is the whole blend family — Hairitage, Haarmonie, Barberella — and it needs phonemes.g2p
coined-surface-taken-on-trust¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
British Hairways
Parameters: source='British Airways', unknown_word='free'
Source: constructed example; the same text under unknown_word: free, which accepts what it cannot check rather than reporting it
komm-rein¶
de — this text satisfies the procedure.
Kamm rein
Parameters: source='Komm rein'
Source: constructed example; the German salon window's Kamm/komm family, at distance 0.333 on the Wiktionary pronunciations
kamm-outside-a-narrow-band¶
de — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
Kamm rein
Parameters: source='Komm rein', max_distance=0.25
Source: constructed counterexample; the same pair with the ceiling below 0.333
normatif¶
fr — this text satisfies the procedure.
diminutif normatif
Parameters: source='diminutif nominatif'
Source: constructed example; the -tif family the French salon window is built on, at distance 0.444 on Lexique's phonemes
normatif-outside-a-narrow-band¶
fr — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
diminutif normatif
Parameters: source='diminutif nominatif', max_distance=0.4
Source: constructed counterexample; the same pair with the ceiling below 0.444
puttenham-prosonomasia¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
Caldius Biberius Mero
Parameters: source='Claudius Tiberius Nero', max_displacements=3
Source: George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), III.xix, on "Prosonomasia, or the Nicknamer": the emperor Claudius Tiberius Nero was called Caldius Biberius Mero for his drinking. Three whole words displaced by neighbours in sound, which is exactly this row's operation — verified against the figure's own text, not inferred from a handbook summary. Rejected: unresolvable_pronunciation twice. The Latin names are in no pronouncing dictionary here, which is the proper-noun limit the row's notes already record, met on the figure's founding example.
curl-up-and-dye¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
Curl Up and Dye
Parameters: source='Curl up and die'
Source: Atlas Obscura, "Hair They Are, the Punniest Salon Names in America", which counts thirty American salons of this name plus a Kurl Up & Dye in Texas — the most copied English shop pun there is. die to dye is an exact homophone in CMUdict, so the distance is 0.000.
grateful-head¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
Grateful Head
Parameters: source='Grateful Dead'
Source: Atlas Obscura, "Hair They Are". The band's name displaced by one word.
jack-of-all-fades¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
Jack of all Fades
Parameters: source='Jack of all trades'
Source: Atlas Obscura, "Hair They Are". fade is a haircut, so the trade word and the displacement are the same move.
i-kneaded-this¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
I Kneaded This
Parameters: source='I needed this'
Source: Atlas Obscura, "Hair They Are". Rejected: unresolvable_pronunciation. CMUdict carries knead and needed and not kneaded, so the pair cannot be measured — a gap in the lexicon rather than in the pun, and the row reports it instead of guessing.