The Pun Tree

Ok, time for something light and fun. This blog post is a compilation of “skeets” I made on my bluesky account, plus some needed edits, starting in December of 2023 of something I've been developing for a while: the Pun Tree; a system for rating puns based on the analogy of fruit from a tree. Yes this is gonna get silly.

One thing to know about this pun rating system is that it is NON-LINEAR. Meaning that while there is a semblance of a hierarchy of good to bad, some puns can be both good AND bad at the same time. This is just how puns do.

We need to first understand what makes a pun a pun. In my own words, a pun is a kind of tongue-in-cheek, “dad joke” wherein you say a word in the context of conversation or a set joke, and the word in question leads your mind to something unrelated to to the context at hand sometimes in a humorous (or not so humorous!) way.

The basic structure of good to bad on the Pun Tree goes like this, the worst puns, the ones that you're really stretching it are Ground Scores. Ground Scores generally are not worth the time it takes to pick them up. Often full of worms and/bruised. Ground Scores are puns that you really have to mangle the sound of the word in question to make it refer to the other thing that the pun leads your mind to. A great example of a rotten ground score came up in my housemates group chat. I had gotten us to subscribe to Grove which is an eco-friendly, tree and plastic-free household and personal products subscription service. On their box they have something that says “enjoy your Grove-y products” or something like that. This is terrible punning their marketing person should be ashamed. The pun both doesn’t fill the whole word “groovy” that they’re trying to get at, they’ve mangled it severely to kinda sound right but it doesn’t. I call this a Rotten Ground Score.

The next category of puns are Low Hanging Fruit. In common parlance, Low Hanging Fruit typically refers to something undesirable because it's so easy. But from a labor perspective, there is nothing wrong with Low Hanging Fruit. If you've ever worked with fruit trees on a small scale you know that Low Hanging Fruit are actually your friends, and at the market you as a consumer would be non the wiser as to what’s LHF and what’s not. However on the Pun Tree, LHF are those puns that are widely used and so often referred to in various contexts. It's true they kinda lose their value a bit because they are so common, but still hold the listeners attention with it’s dual meaning. An example of a LHF that is ripe (meaning it fullfills the entire sound of both references without mangling) is "I'm a fun-guy" when on a mushrooming foray or talking about mycology as a person who identifies as a guy. "Fun-guy" is a correct way to pronounce "fungi", and you will hear it repeatedly in the mycology community. Even though it is LHF, it is also market quality, the next category.

The best and most prized puns are Market Quality puns. It should be noted here that puns work best when they are contextual, as noted in the last on on "fun-guy" that only makes sense in the context of speaking about mushrooms. For a pun to be exclusively Market Quality (but not LHF), it has to A) completely fulfill the sound of both references (or more, some can reference 3+ things), and B) be contextually funny in both cases, and C) be fairly original, i.e. something that is not regularly used like the "fun-guy" example. Now, to be clear here Market Quality has a scale in and of itself. You can have LHF Market Quality like "I'm a fun-guy", and then you can have market quality that are unique and really get people laughing. These are what I call Artisanal.

Artisanal puns are those Market Quality puns that really are funny and at the same time carry meaning in both directions that the word leads your mind to. These are ones that you could make a band name out of, or a new moniker for something else significant. An example that a friend and former martial arts instructor of mine who is a real punster (for better and for worse), Rev. Fajun, described the Winter Solstice as "the Dark Night of the Sol". I enjoyed this one so much that I will forever refer to WS as that because it touches on a deep spiritual process, while at the same time directly describing Winter Solstice exactly as what it is- the longest and darkest night of the solar year. Another great example of an Artisanal class pun is the slogan of the Debt Collective- a movement to abolish student, medical, and other forms of debt peonage- which is “you are not a loan”. This message has such deep meaning in either way it can be interpreted as the sentence is heard and they deserve a high five not only for the great work they do, but also crafty pun-based messaging.

Now for the bit about non-linearness that I've referenced. It is entirely possible to make a pun that people find funny and has relevance to both references, but mangles the word in order to do it. This would be a market quality ground score. Yes, sometimes the fruit you buy at the market the laborers picked up off the ground. They were probably low hanging fruit and just fell off the tree. Deal with it. An example of this is “cawfee” for a coffee meet-up a group of my corvid-loving friends coordinated. It doesn’t quite fulfill the whole word “coffee” but almost and still funny in it’s context. We’ll give it a pass. Some of us are suckers for pun-ishment and so we still like the puns that aren’t freshly picked from the tree.

There's at least one outlier that can be any of the above but has it's own classification- a Newton. A Newton pun is one that the speaker did not mean to make. A former partner of mine was really good at this. They don't go about seeking to make double-meaning from words in conversations like I do. Often times they don’t even realize they made the pun until you look at them like “really?”, and they’re like “what?”, until the full weight of the double-meaning of what they said sinks in.

Another class of puns that I tend to avoid are Poison Apples- puns that spin off of someone’s name that can invoke unpleasant feelings. Don’t do these. Unless of course the person sucks and you need to rub their name in the dirt. Some people need a Poison Apple or two.

For now that is the fullness of my Pun Tree. As examples crop up, or if new categories branch out I may add to this blog post. Enjoy your punning!