Fun with Words

Antagonyms. Words that have two opposing definitions.

Antioxymoron List. The best list of antioxymora (antioxymorons) anywhere.

Ask Your Doctor. Medical jargon that doesn’t make sense.

Bundle Words. Words that can be broken apart into other words, with some humor.

Bundle Words Aloud. Bundle Words that get their humor when pronounced differently.

Butterflies. Word and word phrases looked at differently.

Collective Nouns. Taking the pun approach to what you call groups of things.

Contraps. Word opposite in meaning working together in a sentence.

Daffynitions. Funny definitions for not so funny words.

Demeaned Words. Words that look like they might have some other meaning.

De-tours. Fun with words that begin with "de."

Dis-connections. Fun with words that begin with "dis."

Dittograms. Sentences containing consecutive homonyms or homonymic phrases

Er-rant Words. Fun with words that begin with "er."

Fighting Words. Words of war.

Fractured Definitions. Sentences showing ambiguous word meanings.

Ghost Words. Words that suggest other words that should exist but don’t.

Hyp-hens. Sentences take on new meanings when words are hyphenated incorrectly.

Imps and Ages. Bundle Words that begin with the syllable "imp" as well as those ending with "age."

Job Jokes. Getting a laugh out of job titles.

Loose Language. Poking fun at literary jargon.

Mock Antonyms. Pairs of words that look like antonyms but are not.

Curious Words. Like Wonder Words, these words make you think.

Negafixes. Fun words you get when you lop off the negating prefixes

Oxymoron List. The best list of oxymora (oxymorons) anywhere on the Internet.

Phantom Antonyms. Words that suggest antonyms that aren’t in the dictionary.

Prefix Mixups. The wrong take on prefixed words.

Prime Rhymes. Phrases with rhyming words with rhymed meanings.

Punishing Adjectives. Adjectives that put a pun to work.

Re-collections. Fun with words that begin with "re."

Say Again. Words that may suggest different meanings if pronounced incorrectly.

Sport Orts. A humorous look at sports jargon.

Thingamagigs. Things get funny names.

Tom Swiftlies. "Punning quotations," Tom cited.

Un-real Meanings. Fun with words that begin with "un."

What Do You Call.... Poking fun at occupations.

Wonder Phrases. Phrases that make you wonder about their meaning.

Wonder Words. Words that make you wonder about their meaning.

When is a word funny...

If you think about it, "understand" is a funny word. Unlike "underarm" or "undercook" it does not make a lot of sense. You have to wonder what standing has to do with comprehension. And why under? More curious is trying to figure out the opposite of understand. Is it underlie, overstand, or overlie? Or maybe it's ununderstand, or just plain derstand.

There are lots of funny words in English, like "partake" which looks like it has something to do with golf, or "bigamist" which suggests a person with a sizeable problem, or "cockpit" which just begs to be fooled with. The word "improper" is funny if you split the word after the first p (imagine someone who lassoes little demons.)

But making fun of a word often requires that we ignore the word's etymology—otherwise the amusement might be lost to reason. For example, the word "surgery" begs the question "what surges?" In fact, the word evolved from an old French word surigien with roots in Old English as chirurgeon which came from the Greek cheirourgos (cheir, hand + ergon, work.)''; That history may be interesting, but not very funny.

Why don't we put pants in the pantry? An amusing question—but not if you are aware that the origin of the word "pantry" is from the Middle English panetrie meaning "bread room" borrowed from the Old French paneterie the root of which comes from the Latin word for bread, panis. Meanwhile the origin of "pants" is from Pantaleon, the name of a 4th-century saint who was favored by Venetians who, consequently, became known as Pantaloni. In the 17th century, the French used the word pantalon to refer to a particular style of tights resembling that worn by an old Venetian in an Italian play. The word for tight fitting trousers came to the English as "pantaloons" and by 1850 was shortened to "pants."

To be amused by the absurd looking word "unless" you must forget, or be unaware, that it comes from the phrase "onlesse" (see etymology) and that it has nothing to do with the prefix "un." In general, to be tickled by odd looking words you must ignore the tug of times and tongues on their meanings. That is why there is no consideration of word etymologies in this Fun with Words.

All the words being poked fun at here are real dictionary words. There are no made-up or misspelled words like punderful or punnishing. You won't find here, for example, a warped definition for "impasse" as a demon's butt because it would have to be spelled without the trailing "e", or a mock antonym for "stagnation" as "donation" because it would have to be doenation. When made-up words do appear in this compilation to show the humor of an actual word (such as beforemath, the Phantom Antonym of "aftermath"), it appears in italics.

This collection also does not deal with audible play on words like "the peepholes choice," nor does it toy with nearly similar sounding words like "salary" and "celery," or substituted verbal homonyms like "cache" for "cash." All these kinds of playful oral twists may be entertaining but their number is astronomical and beyond cataloging. However, the words that do appear in these pages should be enough to tickle your humorous humerus.

Listed above are all the categories of word humor contained at this site, each with a brief explanation. The list is also provided in the menu at bottom of each page as well as a click on the shadow "MORE" at the right edge of the page .   [Go to top]