What's the difference between irony and pun?

Irony


Definition:

  • (a.) Made or consisting of iron; partaking of iron; iron; as, irony chains; irony particles.
  • (a.) Resembling iron taste, hardness, or other physical property.
  • (n.) Dissimulation; ignorance feigned for the purpose of confounding or provoking an antagonist.
  • (n.) A sort of humor, ridicule, or light sarcasm, which adopts a mode of speech the meaning of which is contrary to the literal sense of the words.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) And the irony of it is it doesn't interest me at all.
  • (2) The irony of this type of self-manipulation is that ultimately the child, or adult, finds himself again burdened by impotence, though it is the impotence of guilt rather than that of shame.
  • (3) The irony is that we have more media than ever before, but less insight.
  • (4) Richard Aylard, director of sustainability and external affairs for Thames Water, said the firm was aware of the irony that heavy rain had set in after the hosepipe ban was announced.
  • (5) One of the terrible ironies of the Iraq War is that President Bush used the threat of nuclear terrorism to invade a country that had no active nuclear program.
  • (6) That he was able to keep his secret treasures here, not in some remote corner of the globe but in the centre of the city that gave birth to the National Socialist movement, is both extraordinary and not short of a certain dark irony.
  • (7) He is wary of pretension, alive to all shades of irony.
  • (8) There was a thing at the time that said basically: 'Oh, the working classes obviously don't understand this is irony, so Harry's had to kill him off.'
  • (9) But the character – compounded of piercing sanity and existential despair, infinite hesitation and impulsive action, self-laceration and observant irony – is so multi-faceted, it is bound to coincide at some point with an actor’s particular gifts.
  • (10) The irony of her image being exchanged in return for commodities in the future,” she said, “seems to recall the way that actual slaves’ bodies were serving as currencies of exchange.” Larson arrived at a different conclusion about the honor.
  • (11) In the end, though, practical rethinkers have to get beyond the delights of irony and paradox in which Glasman too often wraps himself.
  • (12) There is a perverse irony that people who have cracked their iPhones are now being targeted by hackers.
  • (13) The irony of this is that today, when I was getting all of this horrible antisemitic shit that I’ve only ever seen in Russia, I was reminded that 26 years ago today my family came to the US from Russia.
  • (14) The irony is an uncomfortable one for policymakers.
  • (15) Because of our slightly younger average age and city location, we were supposedly one of the "new wave" WIs that had started springing up in the years before – groups that rejected crochet and did more modern activities, often with more than a tinge of irony.
  • (16) White House officials said that Obama, who was planning to work on the final draft of his speech on his flight from Washington to Oslo, would directly address the issue of the irony of being awarded the peace prize while escalating the war.
  • (17) Labour's pensions spokesman, Gregg McClymont, said: "The irony is that there are lots of good pension schemes out there that are being undermined by what is going on.
  • (18) She is being helpful, no doubt about that, but there is an unconscious note of power play – not to mention the sweet irony of my having provoked her into pulling not one but two phones out of her bag within seconds of us sitting down.
  • (19) "The irony of welcoming to the London 2012 Olympic Games an individual who is alleged to have led an organised and brutal repression of athletes because they peacefully exercised their internationally recognised right to freedom of expression and association during Bahrain's Arab Spring would be a blow to all athletes around the world, and irreconcilable with the UK commitment to human rights and claimed support to peaceful pro-democracy movements," the ECCHR said.
  • (20) A h, the irony of white people complaining about being interrupted by black people.

Pun


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To pound.
  • (n.) A play on words which have the same sound but different meanings; an expression in which two different applications of a word present an odd or ludicrous idea; a kind of quibble or equivocation.
  • (v. i.) To make puns, or a pun; to use a word in a double sense, especially when the contrast of ideas is ludicrous; to play upon words; to quibble.
  • (v. t.) To persuade or affect by a pun.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Go Kings go!” The pun-filled press release issued by De Blasio also helpfully included the lyrics to Sinatra’s and Newman’s classic tunes, in case anyone had forgotten.
  • (2) Bad pun aside, investors are concerned that the company's high growth-rates are tapering.
  • (3) January 12, 2016 Shorten hastily responded to that debate on Twitter with a pun-laden non-answer, saying: “Cos you asked … my favourite lettuce is one that doesn’t have a 15 per cent GST on it.” Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) Cos you asked @workmanalice - my favourite lettuce is one that doesn't have a 15 per cent GST on it.
  • (4) The following day, politicians and eurocrats began scrambling to hammer out a larger rescue package for Greece: 28 April 2010 Photograph: Guardian That was the time when puns about Acropolis Now, and ‘making a drachma out of a crisis’ were in vogue: Greek debt crisis, 28 April 2010 Photograph: Guardian But there wasn’t much time for jokes.
  • (5) Hemingway’s daughter, Corey, is in a marquee at the back of the site, painting a teddy bear onto some MDF, in the pursuit of a Teddy Boy pun that either doesn’t work, or I don’t get, but it looks great.
  • (6) The outcome of 53 patients operated on either for posttraumatic ulnar neuropathy (PUN) or non-traumatic cubital tunnel syndrome (CTS) was reviewed after 3 years follow-up.
  • (7) In a report called "Un-Finnished Business" (you can always rely on the rating agencies for a bad pun), the analysts write: We think the risks to growth in 2012 and 2013 are rising.
  • (8) In all experiments, supplementing TRP-deficient diets with D- and L-TRP significantly increased feed intake, rate and efficiency of gain and decreased plasma urea N (PUN).
  • (9) Systemic LH, FSH, glucagon, cortisol, PUN, NEFA, estradiol, and testosterone were not affected by insulin or level of feeding.
  • (10) The first of April is normally a day of frothy fun, where newspapers and brands compete to produce the best jokes and the worst puns to fool their readers.
  • (11) The unfortunate design hasn’t gone unnoticed and attracted puns galore when it was posted on Reddit over the weekend .
  • (12) Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian The signs of wealth are everywhere, from the luxury gated village of the Pun Hlaing Golf Estate to the towers around swimming pools of Star City , both projects of the Pun empire.
  • (13) Emad Hajjaj, a popular Jordanian cartoonist, drew an elderly Palestinian woman by her sagging UN tent saying – in an untranslatable pun on the words “Charlie” and the colloquial Arabic “I have been” – that she had lived as a refugee for the 67 years since the creation of Israel in 1948.
  • (14) During the war years, his snappy, escapist films brought joy to audiences on the home front, while he was the only Hope (puns on his surname have always been de rigueur ) for thousands of troops overseas whom he entertained on his various tours from 1941.
  • (15) Second, the yuck factor: isn't it just beyond tasteful (no pun intended) for a woman to put her nipple into another woman's baby's mouth?
  • (16) The report tackles a number of issues which, excuse the pun, have been ‘bubbling’ up over the last year.
  • (17) Sorry and all that, but the pun was too good to use: Genre?
  • (18) Was The Wine Show supposed to be a deliberately awful pun on The One Show?
  • (19) The comedian Rob Auton, 30, has seen off competition from acclaimed pun-slingers including Tim Vine and Gary Delaney to pick up TV channel Dave's annual award for one-liners at the fringe.
  • (20) An experiment was conducted with 36 crossbred finishing pigs (18 male castrates and 18 females) to evaluate the effect of bromocriptine implants on growth, feed intake, feed efficiency, plasma urea nitrogen (PUN) and carcass characteristics.

Words possibly related to "pun"