"A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide"
About this Quote
A sly piece of mock jurisprudence imagines a jury weighing not only who struck whom, but the quality of the offending pun, and even finding homicide justifiable if the wordplay were sufficiently atrocious. The hyperbole is the point. By importing the solemn language of the courtroom into the parlor where a groan-worthy jest lands, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. satirizes two targets at once: the social nuisance of bad puns and the legal worlds habit of dignifying trifles with grave procedure.
Holmes relishes legal jargon such as aggravated character and justifiable homicide, phrases that echo aggravated assault and the doctrinal categories law students memorize. He tilts the principle that juries judge facts by suggesting they would also be arbiters of taste. That twist nods to the perennial debate over whether juries judge law as well as fact, but here the joke is that community standards of humor feel as binding as statutes when a punster is at work. The absurd proportionality of the imagined remedy — from a blow to a death — magnifies the mild irritation a pun provokes into a capital-case melodrama.
The context is the genial, talkative world of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, where Holmess persona turns salon chatter into miniature essays. Mid-19th-century readers delighted in puns yet also affected disdain for them; magazines like Punch thrived on wordplay while critics called it the lowest form of wit. Holmes stands in that ambivalence. He enjoys the game, but his Boston Brahmin sensibility defends the company of the table against assaults on taste. The line flatters communal judgment, gently mocks legal formalism, and needles the compulsive punster who mistakes mere verbal coincidence for wit.
That his son would become a great judge is an irresistible footnote, yet the fathers joke already understands law as a social performance. The verdict on a joke, like a verdict in court, announces what a community will tolerate — and what it will not.
Holmes relishes legal jargon such as aggravated character and justifiable homicide, phrases that echo aggravated assault and the doctrinal categories law students memorize. He tilts the principle that juries judge facts by suggesting they would also be arbiters of taste. That twist nods to the perennial debate over whether juries judge law as well as fact, but here the joke is that community standards of humor feel as binding as statutes when a punster is at work. The absurd proportionality of the imagined remedy — from a blow to a death — magnifies the mild irritation a pun provokes into a capital-case melodrama.
The context is the genial, talkative world of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, where Holmess persona turns salon chatter into miniature essays. Mid-19th-century readers delighted in puns yet also affected disdain for them; magazines like Punch thrived on wordplay while critics called it the lowest form of wit. Holmes stands in that ambivalence. He enjoys the game, but his Boston Brahmin sensibility defends the company of the table against assaults on taste. The line flatters communal judgment, gently mocks legal formalism, and needles the compulsive punster who mistakes mere verbal coincidence for wit.
That his son would become a great judge is an irresistible footnote, yet the fathers joke already understands law as a social performance. The verdict on a joke, like a verdict in court, announces what a community will tolerate — and what it will not.
Quote Details
| Topic | Puns & Wordplay |
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