Punster

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who employs linguistic creativity to construct humorous expressions that hinge on puns and wordplay
2. Someone who frequently uses puns to create word-based humor
3. An individual skilled at crafting jokes relying on double meanings and clever language

Etymology: The suffix "-ster" has a long and unglamorous past. It descends from a Proto-West Germanic form "*-astrijā" and reached Old English as "-estre", a feminine ending used for women who did a particular job, such as "bæcestre" (baker-woman). Through Middle English "-estere" it gradually became the ordinary English way of marking a person who does something, though in many words the feminine sense faded and the suffix lost its gender altogether. "Pun" itself is the older and more mysterious half of the pairing, and its origin is uncertain. Puns were a sort of wordplay, so "punster" is simply a pun-maker, built by attaching "-ster" to that base. The pattern is productive rather than ancient: English speakers kept adding "-ster" to nouns and verbs to name practitioners, and "punster" follows the same route as older formations like "songster" and "trickster."

Synonyms: wordsmith, wit, joker