Word.ws English Dictionary

punningly

punningly adverb: in a punning manner; so as to form a pun.

Adverb

punningly (comparative more punningly, superlative most punningly)

  1. In a punning manner; so as to form a pun.
    • Even though some names or words polysemically carry sexual meanings, this does not automatically mean that every usage of them in literary texts, even those of a pornographic nature, has a sexual meaning, either explicitly or punningly.2011, Patrick Spedding, James Lambert, “Fanny Hill, Lord Fanny, and the Myth of Metonymy”, in Studies in Philology, volume 108, number 1, page 113
    • The film is an anthology of three whimsical short stories set in France in the mid-20th Century. The conceit is that they were all published in an English-language magazine which is edited in the punningly-named fictional French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé, but which is attached to an American...2021 July 12, Nicholas Barber, “The French Dispatch: Four stars for Wes Anderson's latest”, in BBC

Forms of punningly

comparativemore punningly
superlativemost punningly

Origin of punningly

From punning + -ly.

Questions about punningly

What does punningly mean?
Punningly means in a punning manner; so as to form a pun.
What part of speech is punningly?
Punningly is an adverb.

Words near punningly in the dictionary

  1. punnies
  2. punniest
  3. punnily
  4. punniness
  5. punning
  6. punningly
  7. punnings
  8. punnish
  9. punnology
  10. punny
  11. Puno

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: punningly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “punningly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/punningly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.