#etymography

A double entendre is one of the most common kinds of puns. A word or phrase with homophones that make it similar enough to another that you can perform the linguistic equivalent of using one of those secret shortcuts through a construction site in a racing game. Just hang a quick right with the conversation and head somewhere people didn’t know you could go but you can.

A triple entendre is more difficult, and has a kind of crystalline quality to it. These practically never happen by accident, and also when they happen most people only catch one or two of the three meanings present in the text. It’s rare enough for them to be crafted at all (underappreciated things are often like this) but those that are made and also made highly visible - a task that takes a whole extra skill set - are of astronomical rarity.

There are two other forms much easier to come by and which get the same job done - they feel impressive - but are exponentially easier to land: The double trick and the double-double.

The double trick exists a lot in Marx Brothers comedy films, but only has popularity in society in like five, six jokes. Essentially, the joke is getting the other person to say the pun. The most famous example by a long shot is updog, with henway being the only other I can think of that involves a setup, and henway hasn’t been in popular use for like fifty years. Updog has been a popular joke in the last five. Several dad jokes act like double tricks, by intentionally misunderstanding someone’s intention to pretend they walked into a double trick trap. But part of what makes people so frustrated with dad jokes is that the supposed “traps” are somewhere around 80, 85 percent of the entire language. You can’t just not make declarative statements about yourself in order to dodge “hi [statement] I’m dad” for your whole life. One of my genuinely favorite double tricks is from duck soup: Angry Official: I’ve got some questions for you, mister. Chico: Well I’va got a question for you! What’s gray, got big ears, a big nose and lives in the circus? Angry Official: That’s irrelevant! Chico: You’re right! There’s a lotter elephants live in the circus!

Honestly. I love this kind of double trick, even if it’s every bit as false and staged as a wireworked kung fu action sequence. If you’ve got a platform to write funny things, include these. They are so good.

The double-double is tricky to write but is more likely to be appreciated than the triple entendre. It’s simply where there’s a double entendre pun on both ends of the sentence. “If you come on my property I’ll beat you off!” “Mister, if you beat me off I’ll come on your property.” It’s basically the pun equivalent of internal rhyme. I love these a great deal as well.