Everything about Word Play totally explained
Word play is a
literary and narrative technique in which the nature of the words used themselves become part of the subject of the work.
Puns, phonetic mix-ups such as
spoonerisms, obscure words and meanings, clever
rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, and telling character names are common examples of word play.
Word play is quite common in
oral cultures as a method of reinforcing meaning.
Interestingly enough, strictly visual
orthographic word play is much less predominant than sound-based word play in alphabetically written literatures. This may be due to the fundamental
orality of written communication in those literatures, as compared with word play in
ideographically written literatures such as the
Chinese.
Most writers engage in word play to some extent, but certain writers are particularly adept or committed to word play.
Shakespeare's "quibbles" have made him a noted punster.
P.G. Wodehouse was also hailed as a "comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce" for his ingenious wordplay.
James Joyce, author of
Ulysses and
Finnegans Wake, is another noted word-player. For example, Joyce's phrase "they were yung and easily freudened" clearly conveys the meaning "young and easily frightened," but it also makes puns on the names of two famous
psychoanalysts,
Jung and
Freud.
Other writers closely identified with word play include:
Plays can enter common usage as
neologisms.
Word play is closely related to
word games, that is, games in which the point is manipulating words. See also
language game for a linguist's variation. The Hungarian term for wordplay, occasionally used in the circle for its diaeres is Szójáték.
A taxonomy of word play together with record-holding words in each category is
available here:
Taxonomy of Wordplay
Further Information
Get more info on 'Word Play'.
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