You can tell a pun is mature when it is full groan.

Puns are jokes who’s punch line is told at the same time as the joke itself, and who’s inside-ness is limited only to the background knowledge of the encoded meanings. They are also known as wordplay, are often the punchline of a riddle like knock-knock jokes, dad jokes, and are inside jokes for people who have the ability to decode the pun.

Verbal Folklore and a Brief History of Puns

Folklore is the production and reproduction of culture. “Folklore is informally learned, unofficial knowledge about the world, ourselves, our communities, our beliefs, our cultures, and our traditions that is expressed creatively through words, music, customs, actions, behaviors, and materials. It is also the interactive, dynamic process of creating, communicating, and performing as we share that knowledge with other people” (Sims and Stephens 2011, 8).

Some verbal folklore such as riddles, jokes, and puns are recognizable by their structure. “If we don’t understand that the structure of a conundrum, for example, demands that we think about different meanings or uses for words, we won’t be able to participate in the game” (Sims and Stephens 2011, 186). What is so witty about the pun at the top of this page is that it follows the patterns and structure of other puns, so it is recognizable, but it also gives insight into social ideation about puns and punsters. “Frederick Ahl has argued that Western culture post-antiquity ‘objects’ to puns, because of a deep-seated sense that punning is ‘not respectable’" (Jordan 2021, 533).