What is homophonic humor?

Homophones, as the name implies, are words with the same pronunciation but different meanings. In life, because homophones are not understood clearly, or the meaning is misunderstood, inadvertently meeting another homophone will lead to jokes. Of course, there are also deliberate use of this means.

Ji Xiaolan and Xiao Shenyang, writers in Qing Dynasty, served as assistant minister and minister respectively. Once they sat at the same table, Xiao Shenyang saw a dog gnawing at a bone under the table and asked Ji Xiaolan, "Is it a wolf (assistant minister) or a dog?" Ji Xiaolan immediately replied: "Vertical tail is a wolf, and vertical (Shangshu) is a dog."

In this dialogue, the two did attack each other, but they both used homophones or homophones, which made the meaning implicit but not explicit and the scene moderate.

Not only in the Qing dynasty, these two adults would make a fuss about dogs gnawing at bones, but Su Dongpo also had a set in this respect.

On this day, Su Dongpo and his friend, a monk from Chengtian Temple, went boating in Chibi. When they saw a dog gnawing at a bone on the beach, they immediately had a brainwave and said, "The dog is gnawing at a bone (monk) by the river." When Shen Guo heard this, he felt that there was something in his words and immediately replied, "Poems (corpses) on Dongpo River." Both of them laughed.

Because, on the surface, it sounds like poetry and realism, praising elegance, but actually teasing and laughing at each other.

If homophones are combined with puns, they will have unexpected humorous effects.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Li Hongzhang had a distant relative who took part in the imperial examination without learning or skill. He had a paper and could not write. Anxious, I want to write "I am a relative of Li Hongzhang, an adult in the main hall" on the test paper. Because he can't write the word "qi", he actually wrote "I am Li's biological wife." After reading it, the examiner approved: "So I dare not take it (marry)." Because the examiner takes the examinee's "take" and "marry" as homophones, and brings two unrelated things together.

Flexible and ingenious use of homophones can make people laugh, often containing profound metaphors, which is a typical method of teasing and ridiculing words.