punning

1. 1.

   a humorous play on words

   “I do it for the pun of it”

   “his constant punning irritated her”

   Synonymspunwordplayparonomasia

   Broaderfun

Other forms of punning

plural

punnings·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about punning

What does punning mean?

punning means "a humorous play on words".

How many syllables are in punning?

punning has 2 syllables: pun-ning. The stress falls on "pun".

What is another word for punning?

Close synonyms include pun, wordplay, paronomasia. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is punning a common word?

punning is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.