Phony Swap: Homophones are friends, not food

What the heck is a homophone? How can it make my puns better? Fear not! With help from the Phony Swap, you'll be a homophone pro in no time.

I love quilting sew much. You can often find me in my craft room, bobbin my head along to music while I work. With thimble fingers, I stitch perfect lines. I don’t understand how people do knot like to sew. I sleep curled up in needle position, and when I wake up, there’s always a fabric in my neck.

A whole paragraph of sewing puns. Some, admittedly, better than others. Aside from their theme, what do these puns have in common?

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(You got this. Remember 6th grade English class. Unless you fell asleep while Mrs. Schafer droned on about prepositions. Then you get a pass.)

…

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Alright, I’ll throw you a bone. Ever heard of a “homophone”?

No, not a person that hates gay people. That’s a homophobe.

No, not the human race. That’s Homo sapiens.

No, not murder. That’s homicide.

Homophone. All of the above words are examples of homophones. Maybe that will jog your memory a little more.

Cut the crap, tell us what it is!

I’d prefer to go nowhere near the crap, much less cut it (what is this, crap culinary school?).

But crap aside, here’s the definition: a homophone is a word that sounds like another word but has a different meaning.

To appease my inner etymology nerd, let’s break it down. “Hom” is the Greek root meaning “same”, while “phon” is the Greek root for “sound”. So, homophone literally means “same sound.” Neat, huh?

Homophone sounds similar to homophobe, or Homo sapiens, or homicide, but their meanings are unrelated. And if you accidentally switch up words in the middle of a sentence, you end up with a sentence that is totally different than you intended. Like trying to warn your bisexual friend that your uncle is homophobic, but instead you say he’s homicidal.

Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash

Oopsie!

To avoid these accidents, you need to learn how to use homophones intentionally. But how do you do that?

Introducing the Phony Swap.

The Phony Swap is a simple technique. No cellphones needed.

Take a sentence and replace one word with a contextually-appropriate homophone. It sounds scary, but don’t worry. It’s punmistakably easy.

To show you how this works, let’s deconstruct my paragraph of sewing puns from earlier. Here’s the de-pun-ed version:

I love quilting so much. You can often find me in my craft room, bobbing my head along to music while I work. With nimble fingers, I stitch perfect lines. I don’t understand how people do not like to sew. I sleep curled up in fetal position, and when I wake up, there’s always a crick in my neck.

Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

My poor punagraph got massacred, and I intend to resurrect it. What could make this paragraph 10 times more interesting?

Well, duh, puns! Not just one or two, though. Those are chump numbers. We need an apundance of them.

We can’t just pun willy nilly, though. The paragraph is about my love of sewing (which is very real, by the way), so it follows that we should make puns about sewing.

That’s a key part of the Phony Swap: the association between the context and the homophone. After all, it would be silly to make a pun about a completely unrelated topic while talking about something else.

Here’s how to perform a Phony Swap.

First, brainstorm related words. For this example, sewing related words: sew, bobbin, thimble, knot, needle, fabric. Here's a great resource to use in brainstorming.

Next, find homophones to replace. So, bobbing, nimble, not, fetal, crick.

Lastly, perform the swap. So → sew, bobbing → bobbin, nimble → thimble, etc.

Let’s see it in action!

I love quilting sew much. You can often find me in my craft room, bobbin my head along to music while I work. With thimble fingers, I stitch perfect lines. I don’t understand how people do knot like to sew. I sleep curled up in needle position, and when I wake up, there’s always a fabric in my neck.

Bam! You’ve successfully operated on that life-support dependent paragraph and breathed new life into it. With some quick Phony Swaps, you now have a masterfully crafted, pun-laced paragraph that’s sure to earn at least a hundred eye rolls.

Phony Swaps are the easiest ways to make punny sentences, and a great way to start punning it up right now! Go find a group of unsuspecting people and watch them weep at the sight of your Phony Swaps, and sleep well knowing that you are one step closer to achieving pun-lightenment.