21

I saw this sentence as an example of pun or wordplay. But I couldn't find out where the wordplay is. Any idea?

4
  • 5
    Why people downvote without bringing some reasons? I'm so mad about this behavior. Isn't it a little non-civil and rude? Jul 25, 2011 at 11:44
  • 9
    My guess is that they have downvoted because they don't think that the 'explain this joke' sort of requests are interesting or likely to be useful to other users.
    – z7sg Ѫ
    Jul 25, 2011 at 11:49
  • @Saeed Neamati: My apologies. I did downvote for the reason given by z7sg. I normally do say why I'm downvoting - for some reason I mistakenly assumed you did in fact recognise the wordplay, and simply wanted an excuse to post a 'joke'. Jul 25, 2011 at 16:38
  • 1
    @Saeed: do note that if you hover over the downvote button, the alt text says "this question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful". That's not one, but three potential (and valid) reasons for downvoting.
    – RegDwigнt
    Jul 27, 2011 at 9:56

1 Answer 1

48

Graceful movement is often described as "poetry in motion"; the pun is in the similarity in sound between poetry and poultry. If one isn't familiar with the common phrase, then the humour disappears.

3
  • 1
    Yeah @Stan, you're right. I wasn't familiar with "poetry in motion". Thanks. Jul 25, 2011 at 11:12
  • 7
    +1. Not having a decent grasp of the idioms of any language is likely to make much of the humor in that language a lot less funny. Jul 25, 2011 at 17:21
  • I knew a popular jazz song called "poultry in motion"... which further confused the meaning of this, as that was the only phrase with which I was familiar Dec 9, 2016 at 16:14

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.