Tom Swifty is a type of pun that uses homophones and is told as a one-liner joke. It is named after a series of adventure books for boys with a hero called Tom Swift. The pun usually involves an adverb describing how Tom speaks and part of the pun in his words. Examples include “I love hot dogs,” Tom said frankly, and “I’m dying,” croaked Tom.
A Tom Swifty is a particular type of pun, or play on words, most of which depend on a series of homophones, different words that sound alike. A Tom Swifty is told or written as a one-line joke. Unlike a riddle, it doesn’t have a question and an answer – the narrator just waits for the listener to figure out the joke.
Tom Swifty’s name comes from the books on a series of adventure books for boys with a hero called Tom Swift. The authorship is actually attributable to a group of several writers who used the pseudonyms Victor Appleton and Victor Appleton, Jr., and who were prone to using a wide variety of adverbs to characterize the speech of the characters, inspiring the invention of the game of words. The pun called Tom Swifty, however, was not actually used in the series.
There are a variety of types of puns that use puns, but Tom Swifty usually uses a pun in a special way. Part of the pun always appears in the words spoken by Tom Swifty, while the other part usually appears in an adverb describing how Tom Swifty speaks. Variations include having someone besides Tom speak and making a pun with the new speaker’s name or using a synonym for “said,” which creates the pun.
Here are some examples from Tom Swifties with explanations of how puns work:
“I have to admit: I love hot dogs,” Tom said frankly.
Frank and hot dog are synonymous, while frankly also means bluntly, and is an appropriate adverb for the confessional tone of Tom’s statement in this Tom Swifty.
“I’ve been to every store in the neighborhood and no one has bananas,” Tom said unnecessarily.
Tom’s search was fruitless in that it yielded nothing and fruitless in that he could not find the particular type of fruit he was looking for.
“I’m dying,” croaked Tom.
This is an example of one of the variations: there is no adverb, and the pun is in the synonym of “said”. The synonym is chosen both because croaking is synonymous with dying, and because Tom is losing his voice and his life, so the description of how he speaks is appropriate for the situation in which he describes himself.
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