No Pun Intended (Pun Always Intended)

Here at Zinzin we have an internal disagreement over the phrase “no pun intended.” Can it really be truthfully said, or are puns always intended, whether “intended” or not? Join us below as we argue both sides of the debate, with perspectives both in defense of that phrase and attacking it.

First up, Holden makes his case.

No pun intended (Holden spitting facts)

In my view, the phrase “no pun intended” can be truthfully said — a pun can be unintended — in several contexts.

When it’s just not the point

The most common context in which it can be truthfully said is when the person saying it is acknowledging there is a pun in whatever they said before, but it isn’t the purpose of what they said. They are intending to get across the substance of their message, not make a pun. For example, let’s say someone accused these senators, or the author of this article about them, of intentionally making a pun here:

Sen Schumer, alongside New Jersey Sen Cory Booker and Oregon Sen Ron Wyden released a joint statement on Monday declaring their intention to push forward major cannabis policy reform. [Source: The Independent]

They would likely acknowledge that yes, there is a pun here: “a joint statement on cannabis.” But then they would likely clarify, “no pun intended,” and they would be telling the truth, because it wasn’t their intention.

Again, the senators and the author of the article about them were only intending to get across the substance of their message. “Joint statement” is simply the proper terminology here; it would be used regardless of the topic they were addressing. It just so happens that the topic addressed here makes it a pun, but it wasn’t intended. It is purely a coincidence.

When ignorance makes punning impossible

Another context in which someone can truthfully say this phrase is when they didn’t even know there was a pun present in whatever they said, due to not knowing the other meanings of their words. Thus, when they are accused of punning, they are genuinely surprised, so they can honestly say “no pun intended” after the fact.

For example, let’s say someone is starting to lift weights. Their friend asks them if they’re gonna buy any supplements, and they respond, “I’m weighing my options.” The friend laughs and says “good one!” The gym newbie is confused and asks what they mean. The friend explains that whey protein is the most common supplement for people who lift weights, and that they made a pun on it with “weighing” their options.

But this is all brand new information to the newcomer: they had never heard of “whey” specifically. They only had some vague understanding that protein is good for muscles. “Oh, no pun intended, I guess,” they say, truthfully. It is impossible for them to have intended a pun they did not even know was there. You cannot intend a pun when you do not already have the knowledge necessary to form it; it can only be an accident.

Let’s take this ignorance context even further. Let’s say you ask a cat, “what’s your favorite symbol in statistics?” — and the cat replies, “mew.” You cannot seriously accuse the cat of punning, just because that’s how the Greek letter “μ” (mu), representing the population mean in statistics, is pronounced. You set the cat up. That’s just the sound it makes. It hasn’t the slightest grasp of mathematics, or any human language. It’s even more incorrect to credit the cat with punning than the lifter in the previous example.

Source: Redbubble

When there’s no pun in the first place.

Lastly, someone may truthfully say “no pun intended” when there is really no pun present whatsoever. They think there is, and they’re trying to be clever — but in fact they’re just being unintentionally honest, because whatever they intended to say isn’t actually a pun. For example, consider this tweet from Magic Johnson during the NBA Playoffs last season:

This is just way too weak to be a pun (Magic/magical). It would be like our founder Jay pointing to a blue jay and calling that a pun. C’mon Magic, be better.

It’s not a direct enough connection to be a valid pun. And Magic makes it more confusing by not putting the “(no pun intended)” directly after the word he thinks makes it a pun, “magical.”

Sure, you could still say that Magic intended to make a pun. He tried his best, as weak as it turned out. But if there ends up being no pun at all, can you really say he intended the pun, which isn’t even there? This situation is admittedly trickier than the others. However, it’s still most accurate to say “no pun intended” here. He was trying to be tongue-in-cheek with how he used that phrase, but it inadvertently came off as more literal, due to his failure to pun.

Now let’s hear a different perspective.

Pun always intended (Jay’s counterpunt)

Jay here for my rebuttal. Well Holden, you got me — there are indeed some situations where a pun can’t be intended, which you outlined above. But that’s not exactly what I mean whenever I say “pun always intended.” Here’s my point in a nutshell:

Any pun acknowledged as such is intended. Always. End of story.

In all cases in which someone acknowledges that a pun has been made by declaring “no pun intended,” I maintain that cannot be true, because all such puns are always intended.

Why do I hold this seemingly counterintuitive belief? Simple.

When someone makes a pun, and then states, “no pun intended,” they are clearly trying to have their cake and eat it too. (Or halve their cake and eat it two.) A person can only not intend a pun if they didn’t know they had made one — the “ignorance” defense Holden outlined above.

However, if someone directly refers to their pun and says “no pun intended,” then clearly they are aware they made a pun. So how, at that point, could the pun possibly be “unintended?” It can’t.

Why no pun intended is actually pun intended

Dictionary.com has a good analysis of the phrase “no pun intended” that supports this argument:

No pun intended is a humorous parenthetical comment used to acknowledge one has made a pun or other bit of overly cheesy or clever wordplay—sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not.

Adding no pun intended as an aside dates back to at least the early 1800s. From its start, the expression had a playful quality, used by a writer or speaker when they’ve made some wordplay, whether a pun or other double entendre, that was right on the nose.

…No pun intended is most often used, ironically enough, to call attention to a pun one has made. Often these puns are deliberate, corny, but too wonderfully dad joke-y to resist … and other times the puns are inadvertent but realized in the moment, too droll or drily humorous to let slip by without notice.

So, saying no pun intended often has the same effect as its opposite, pun intended.

Occasionally, people use no pun intended as if it means “no exaggeration,” a mistake likely due to the fact that no pun intended is a familiar stock phrase.

I agree, and this bit is the mic drop: “saying no pun intended often has the same effect as its opposite, pun intended.” Exactly. It doesn’t matter if the pun was intentionally made or spontaneously accidental. However, once someone makes it, and recognizes it as a pun, at that point, it becomes intended.

Punishing Schrödinger’s Cat

A pun is the Schrödinger’s Cat of language (mu!): when you make a pun, for a brief instant, that pun, like ‘Ol Erwin’s famous cat, is simultaneously both intended and unintended. But as soon as you declare, “pun not intended,” you’ve broken the glass and killed the cat, and from then on the pun can only be intended.

This holds equally true of course for written, as opposed to spontaneous spoken puns. But there’s a special corner of Hell for those who would dare to serve up a pun and then opine, in writing, “no pun intended.” That hurts my brain just to imagine such a thing.

But imagine it I did. And to put an “image” to this imagination, I fired-up Google’s Ngram Viewer to see all appearances in books for the phrase “no pun intended” from 1740 to 2022. The results are unsettling, but not terribly surprising:

After slowly gaining traction post-WWII, use of “no pun intended” in print really took off in the 1990s. What else happened in the nineties? Oh yeah, the Internet. So there was probably both an explosion in the total number of puns being made, culturally, and a growing shame associated with making them, perhaps because of online anti-pun bullying.

This likely caused the huge spike in the number of authors actually putting puns into print and then claiming they weren’t intended, perhaps out of shame. They might as well have said, “no words intended.” Or, “this page (full of words) intentionally left blank.” You can’t intentionally poison the cat and then get away with saying, “no dead cat intended.”

Sorry to continue to beat a dead cat.

“Intend your puns, you cowards!”

When someone says “no pun intended,” this is what they are really saying:

I made a pun here, but I don’t want this clever bit of wordplay to distract from the really important message I am trying to convey. So I will disavow the pun by saying “no pun intended.” And yet, since the pun is clever and I want people to see how clever I am, I will still make the pun, even while insisting that it wasn’t intended. Thus I score points for making the pun, and more points for unmaking the pun to reinforce how important and serious my message is and how serious I am for rejecting something as silly and frivolous as a pun.

To which I say: bullshit. Let’s not feign outrage against puns. Let’s own them when we make them, not put on airs that puns are somehow beneath us, while still making them. Take ownership of your puns, people!

I rust my case.

Lastly, a word about puns and naming

Even though we squabble about the intention of puns, we love a good pun. At their best, puns are unexpected bursts of humor. However, we don’t advocate the use of puns in company names and product names, in most cases.

When it comes to names, a pun risks getting stale. This is because a pun is, in essence, a joke. If someone repeats a joke over and over, the humor and joy diminishes. The same risk exists for a name that uses a pun, since people see, speak, and hear a brand name over and over.

That’s not to say puns should always be avoided in naming. We simply urge proceeding with caution.

Part of the magic of puns is that they run deeper than mere wordplay. A pun reveals a metaphor, a connection between two things not typically connected. In naming, this same connection appears in evocative names — the most powerful and memorable type of brand name out there.

What do YOU think?

Can a pun ever be unintended, or are puns always intended?

Help us inform this debate. Add your take on “no pun intended” in the comment section below. We’d especially love to hear from The Grand Punjandrum*, if they’d care to weigh-in on either side — or both sides — of this debate.

* OED: Panjandrum: (A mock title for) a mysterious (frequently imaginary) personage of great power or authority; a pompous or pretentious official; a self-important person in authority. Also Grand Panjandrum, Great Panjandrum.