Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word. — Julio Cortazar
We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words. — Niels Bohr
Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke. — Ambrose Bierce
Every poet knows the pun is Pierian, that it springs from the same soil as the Muse?a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance. — Louis Untermeyer
When putting words together is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice. — Horace
And what better way to get people talking than by creating a new word. — Stephen Amell
Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough. — Salman Rushdie
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
You a lame so yo dame playin mind games;
I'm a pimp so I stay in that mind frame. — Lil' Flip
Your whole vocabulary's played out, admit it.
Still wack if it came out my mouth and I spit it. — Redman
Words have power. The power to soothe. The power to skewer someone through the heart. The power to render someone speechless. — Ellen Hopkins
I think the play on words for 'Punky' Brewster has definitely played itself out. — Jordana Brewster
ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography. — Ambrose Bierce
A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself. — Doug Larson
Short Wordplay Quotes
They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too. — Oscar Wilde
Are you tired? You should be! You've been running through my mind all day. — Gary Barlow
Many a man has failed because he had his wishbone where his backbone should have been. — Ronald Reagan
You know what they say about big hitters...the woods are full of them. — Jimmy Demaret
That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them. — Dorothy Parker
I'm not a vegetarian! I'm a dessertarian! — Bill Watterson
I ain’t no hipster, but girl I can make your hips stir. — Mac Miller
Don't look at me in that tone of voice. — Dorothy Parker
When things go wrong, don't go with them. — Elvis Presley
I don't need DRUGS, I got the Most HIGH. — LeCrae
Wordplay Image Quotes
Play On Words Quotes
I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer. — Alicia Witt
Dreams, puns, elisions, plays on words and similar tricks that we ordinarily think of as frivolous, all play a surprising and somewhat disconcerting role in the communication of important and serious feelings. — Milton H. Erickson
You and I are players, God's our coach, and we're playing the biggest game of all. We have a loving God that made us. We need to get on His team. It says in His word, there's only one way to Him and that's through Jesus Christ. — Joe Gibbs
I would rather play with forked lightning, or take in my hand living wires with their fiery current, than to speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are hurling on others, to the hurt of their own souls and bodies. — A. B. Simpson
Everybody in hip-hop discriminates against gay people. Matter of fact, the exact opposite word of 'hip-hop,' I think, is 'gay.' Like yo, you play a record and if it's wack, 'That's gay, dog!' And I wanna just come on TV and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, 'Yo, stop it, fam.' — Kanye West
This Lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords, quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it, wherever you may go, even if I let you down, this lullaby plays on. — Sarah Dessen
I always think of shade as being full of light. That is why I like to use the word shade rather than light and shadow. Shade seems to play over the thing, envelop it, better define it, while shadow seems to fall on the thing and stain the surface with darks. — John French Sloan
I played [baseball] in college, so it wasn't that much a stretch. But I would say the main thing for guys who hadn't played before it's just one word - swagger. If you have swagger on the field, and look like you know how to play, that's 90% of it. — Tyler Hoechlin
I can play a song for somebody, and when certain parts come on, I cringe. I might not like my vocal or the way I sang a certain word. Playing intimate shows is when I feel the most vulnerable; you can hear and see everything. Those are the most rewarding as well. — T. Mills
People have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments. — Albert Camus
Movements have narratives. They tell stories, because they are not just about rearranging economics and politics. They also rearrange meaning. And they're not just about redistributing the goods. They're about figuring out what is good. — Marshall Ganz
A cement mixer collided with a prison van on the Kingston Pass. Motorists are asked to be on the lookout for 16 hardened criminals. — Ronnie Corbett
I probably spent more time listening to albums than writing songs. But I think that gave me all the tricks in terms of wordplay, from how I pronounced my words to the actual delivery. — Kendrick Lamar
Everything with jokes is about context. Jimmy Carr makes jokes about Jews. One of his jokes I remember is ‘They say there’s safety in numbers – tell that to 6 million Jews’. You laugh because it is funny. I don’t think Jimmy Carr is Jewish but the thing with that joke is it is primarily about the wordplay. He’s saying that this saying doesn’t always apply and has found a horrific and funny example. I don’t think that makes him anti-Semitic. But there could be a way of doing a joke that is anti-Semitic. No one really knows until you’ve said the joke, this is the thing. It really depends on the context. — Konstantin Kisin
We always know, we always know, which is the right way to go, and which is the wrong way to go. Sometimes, the wrong way is easier to go, or more satisfying, and so we choose that way instead of the right one and we justify it with complicated wordplay and such; but we are only kidding ourselves. — Milton William Cooper
Love flies out the door when money comes innuendo. — Groucho Marx
I have some things that I've been workin' on, such as delivery, wordplay, breath control, just a lot of other things that artists work on, that the listener may not be listening for. — Joe Budden
He: "Whale you be my valentine?" She: "Dolphinitely. — Adam Young
And there are two types of stories. One type is one's own story. The other type is telling the stories of others. Thanks to this genre, writers of nonfiction can now use the tools of the reporter, the points of view and ear for dialog of a novelist, and the passion and wordplay of the poet. — Lee Gutkind
And spare me the jokes about scoring." "Dammit, woman, you read my mind," he said. "Is there no filthy wordplay you can't forsee?" "It's my special magical power. I can read your mind when you're thinking dirty thoughts." "So, ninety-five percent of the time. — Cassandra Clare
Did you ever notice all the items on a honey do list are dangerous. Clean gutters, put light in shower, patch roof. It's a honey die list. — Bill Engvall
The only way on earth to multiply happiness is to divide it. — Paul Scherrer
Saying yes all the time won't make me Wonder Woman. It will make me a worn out woman. — Lysa TerKeurst
Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good. One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them. — Joseph Joubert
L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling was recorded on tape making racist comments. He now has been banned from the league for life. Great, just where Sterling wanted to end up - the blacklist. — Jimmy Fallon
One of my favourite things about country music is that, at least until recently, you could always count on a solid story, a punchline and a pun. I think it has that in common with hip hop, where they're not afraid of wordplay and I really appreciate that. — St. Vincent
The spirit of tanka interests me more than following rigid conventions. As I understand it, the tradition allows a variety of approaches, from simple description and heartfelt expression to classical allusion and evocative wordplay. Succeeding generations rediscover and renew the form so that it retains its vitality. — Harryette Mullen
Of course it is,’ said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said; ‘there’s a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is– “The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours. — Lewis Carroll
What a funny watch!’ she remarked. ‘It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!’ ‘Why should it?’ muttered the Hatter. ‘Does YOUR watch tell you what year it is?’ ‘Of course not,’ Alice replied very readily: ‘but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.’ ‘Which is just the case with MINE,’ said the Hatter. — Lewis Carroll
You go back to those films of the '40s and '50s and hear the dialogue, the way the people played off each other - the wordplay. I think we've really lost that in movies. — Clive Owen
If you were to climb up on your desk, walk around behind your monitor and lean way over so you could see the screen, you'd be able to read "Wordplay" just as easily as you could sitting in your chair. — John Langdon
I started putting words together, making rhymes and being witty with the wordplay. I can play a little bit of guitar, and that's something I'm going to dedicate more time to doing. — James Paxton
In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process. — Matthea Harvey
And there's wordplay and there's rhythms and you have to be able to get the poetry out of it. You have to be able to sell my jokes. And if you're talking about somebody like Sam Jackson, they do that. Sam Jackson can do that. Sam Jackson can turn it into the spoken word that it was always meant to be and he can sell my jokes. And Christopher Walken can do it and a lot of people can do it, all right. — Quentin Tarantino
I can be really silly when I'm not actually writing silliness, and I have to rein that in. Pynchon, in my opinion, sometimes tells elaborate shaggy dog stories just to work up to a pun or punch line. My challenge is to use humor and wordplay to reinforce the emotional core of the novel. — Mary Kay Zuravleff
Are we absolutely certain that Becky Albertalli didn't just steal the diary of a hilariously observant teenage boy? Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda is a pitch-perfect triumph of wit and wordplay that feels timelessly, effortlessly now. — Tim Federle
I love astute observations and really great wordplay. I love the way that Louis C.K. observes life, and I love the way Patton Oswalt talks about it. — Greg Behrendt
Poststructuralism. . . . is a form of literary criticism that uses elaborate wordplay to prove its central premise, that all language is internally contradictory and has no fixed meaning. — Naomi Wolf
That’s why you call it a budget. You set it and you don’t budge. — Jennifer Morrison
tomorrow's gone-we'll have tonight! — Dorothy Parker
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of wordplay quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about wordplay to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of wordplay quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
