94
votes
Verb meaning "to alter someone's famous saying"
Is 'Misquote' not an acceptable answer?
Misquote - quote (a person or a piece of written or spoken text) inaccurately.
- 2,066
77
votes
Accepted
What is so bad about puns?
It's not generally to excuse a pun, but to draw attention to it.
Sometimes "no pun intended" is an edit, or when the author/speaker realised an accidental pun (and in the case of writing decided ...
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75
votes
Verb meaning "to alter someone's famous saying"
With apologies to -
Although this has been trotted out a bit too often, it nevertheless does what you want - it shows you know what you did, and acknowledges you did it on purpose. It is the ...
- 17k
73
votes
What type of humor would racist and sexist jokes be categorized into?
You could say those types of jokes are off-color humor:
Off-color Humor
Humor that deals with topics that may be considered to be in poor taste or overly vulgar. Most commonly labeled as "...
- 4,998
53
votes
Verb meaning "to alter someone's famous saying"
To bastardise Churchill's famous saying, I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat and misquotes
The link is to Cambridge dictionary, where bastardise is defined as
to change something in a way that ...
- 21.9k
36
votes
Accepted
What does this joke between Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra mean?
In this quip, the term fairy is being used to imply homosexuality. "Fairy" is a somewhat archaic term for homosexuality that today would be considered offensive.
Nels Anderson in The Hobo (1923) ...
- 476
33
votes
What type of humor would racist and sexist jokes be categorized into?
This sort of humour is the opposite of politically correct, so would be classified as politically incorrect. It is sometimes used carefully and intelligently to point up the excesses of political ...
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31
votes
Accepted
Understanding the joke, "Make an 'ell, I say" (from The Crux)
Foote sisters = three feet = one yard. The implication is likely also there that the three sisters all together at once is a lot to handle, socially and mentally, as they're described as having very ...
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30
votes
Accepted
Closest equivalent to the Chinese jocular use of 职业病 (occupational disease): job creates habits that manifest inappropriately outside work
The most straightforwardly similar term is "occupational hazard", which is frequently used this way (in my experience).
Bruce Sterling writes in his book "The Hacker Crackdown":
...
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28
votes
Accepted
Verb meaning "to alter someone's famous saying"
You say you are looking for 'way of saying that you are slightly, but intentionally, modifying a famous phrase'.
Breaking that down, it seems that the modification would be obvious, leaving the need ...
- 11.7k
28
votes
Accepted
What constitutes humor on this "i before e" coffee mug text?
"i before e except after c"* is a spelling "rule" that many people remember from school or just because it's often repeated. It refers to words like "piece" to help ...
- 3,108
24
votes
What type of humor would racist and sexist jokes be categorized into?
If you mean gags based on race or gender, then mostly the jokes themselves come from stereotype humour, which is extremely common. "BMW drivers are arrogant and selfish". "Scientists are socially ...
- 1,793
18
votes
What is so bad about puns?
However, I can not wrap my head around why are you constantly excusing/explaning something so innocent(?) as pun. [...] We don't excuse puns in my native language, in my country, we just laugh it off.
...
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17
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Closest equivalent to the Chinese jocular use of 职业病 (occupational disease): job creates habits that manifest inappropriately outside work
In English, in a conversation, we can say "Sorry, work habit" followed by a sheepish smile or "(It's) just a work habit". It's difficult to find written usages as it is mainly ...
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14
votes
What is so bad about puns?
Dispensing with Distraction
Mostly I think it is the speaker saying either I’m clever, I spotted the accidental pun or else I’m funny, I made a pun, but there is a possible third reason: distraction.
...
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14
votes
What does this joke between Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra mean?
A common meaning for fairy is homosexual (most dictionaries warn that this use is offensive), and that is one of its uses here. The usual meaning of fairy godmother is a magical woman who watches over ...
- 679
12
votes
Understanding the joke, "Make an 'ell, I say" (from The Crux)
There's three sisters, and they are named Foote, which sounds like foot. So three Footes, or three feet, is a yard. This is a silly pun which, presumably, Mr. Lane finds more childish than amusing.
To ...
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11
votes
Verb meaning "to alter someone's famous saying"
If you wish to signal that you are playing with the quotation, you could write:
"As Churchill might have said-"
or
"With apologies to Churchill-"
or even
"As Churchill never said-"
But ...
- 28.2k
11
votes
What does "are nines" mean in this context?
It's common to rate people's qualities (beauty, wealth, personality, etc.) on a 10 point scale, with 10 being perfection and 0 or 1 being least desirable.
A "nine" is someone who is almost ...
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11
votes
Accepted
Word for nonce antonyms formed by reversing idioms
There is nothing in English that is “not proper”
There can be things that are not common (e.g. obsequious or morrow), inappropriate for the context (e.g. street language in Parliament or vice-versa), ...
- 1,814
9
votes
Accepted
Where is the humour in the following citation?
I have a different view of the humour than @Shoe.
The humour is based on the fact that newborn babies do not speak at all! Babies generally learn to speak some time after their 1st birthday.
Thus, ...
- 940
8
votes
Verb meaning "to alter someone's famous saying"
Tweak
3.
to make a minor adjustment to:
e.g. to tweak a computer program.
Can be used colloquially to represent taking any idea of someone else's, then changing it slightly to make it your ...
- 1,404
8
votes
Closest equivalent to the Chinese jocular use of 职业病 (occupational disease): job creates habits that manifest inappropriately outside work
I have encountered the expression professional reflex referring to the situation you describe. E.g.
The White Tiger is a story of servitude, resentment and love – and what its hero calls “the ...
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7
votes
Does 'droll' have a negative connotation?
By and large, on the whole, not to put to fine a point on it, 'Very droll' is in itself, as far as one can tell, one of those phrases that speaks clearly its own meaning, when put into the context of ...
7
votes
What is an example of a “clean” redivider?
just + ice
quest + ion
arc + her
pass + age
friend + ship
imp + art
I have just spent an hour and a half finding three pages of them for my Year 5 11+ group!!
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7
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What constitutes humor on this "i before e" coffee mug text?
user8356's answer correctly describes the meaning behind the text on the mug.
As for the "humor," I would agree with Weather Vane's comment—if the mug is "funny" at all, it is not &...
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7
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Is there a term for sentences that are hopelessly and often humorously ambiguous? (e.g. "Squad helps dog bite victim") Are there algorithms for them?
The term crash blossoms [Merriam-Webster: neologism monitoring panel] has been coined for headlines of this kind. It originates with a headline in which blossoms was intended as a verb (develops ...
- 28.1k
6
votes
What's a the word for people who make fun of themselves?
The term you are looking for is self-deprecating. The Oxford Dictionary of English by Angus Stevenson defines the word as meaning:
Modest about or critical of oneself, especially humorously so: ‘...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible