Equality is the Hardest Word to Pun Upon

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Dear Dr. John Creak, Quality Control Department

First of all, let me thank you for the chance to be involved in such a worth while cause as the attempt at finding a pun for every social ill.

There are millions of words in the English language. There is a word to describe virtually anything, and even when those run out, there is "indescribable" to describe that. Some people put the amount of words in English close to a million, which may in fact be a conservative estimate. However, even that dwarfs other major European languages, as French is made up of only a few hundred thousand, German has even fewer, mostly consisting of base vocabulary and then prefixes and suffixes. Spanish is probably the closest with roughly 500,000 words at its disposal. Russian too has somewhere in between 350,000 and 500,000. Portuguese, as it is largely based on the Spanish tongue, also has a rough estimate of 500,000. Italian is thought to contain again, somewhere in the region of 400,000 to 500,000 words.

Outside of Europe, it's a very different situation though. The Chinese language, or perhaps, languages, consists of 29 differing alphabets (technically syllabaries) which gives it a range of around 15 million words. Japanese, on the other hand, with only 3 syllabaries, make up about 600,000. In India, it's very difficult to put a rough estimate on how many words are in use. Hindi and English are regarded as the official languages of the Indian Union, but Hindi itself, like English is a mix of all different types of languages from surrounding countries and regions. Arabic beats English again with some estimates ranging around the 7 million mark, though it is difficult to tell because of so many variations.

So then, with so many words at ones fingertips, with the European syntax of about 4 million words and the Asian syntax of somewhere around 30 million words, it should be very easy to come up with a suitable pun for Equality. Diversity is easy, with a multitude of Diverse Cities, a Diver sitting on a rock and even, if one were to push it a bit, how to kill a verse (die verse, get it?) yet for equality, it's much harder. Yes, there is the fact that "quality" sits merrily, making up most of the word. However, e-quality isn't really a pun, is it? That's just separating the word without any relevant meaning of the two elements.

An attempt could be made by hosting an equal tea, a meal of the day held at a round table where all participants are treated the same, yet, equal tea doesn't quiet have the same rhythm to it as equality. It is also lacking that moment that makes a pun a good one, that moment where both forms of words come flash in the mind, and both the concept of the words and the meaning beneath come to make perfect sense. It's like a maths puzzle, once the answer becomes clear, the entire thing should fit into place as an elegant solution that is easily remembered. Equal tea does not fit into this pattern.

There is no real rhyme that can be found to match equality. Frivolity is the closest word to it, yet even that does not provide a large range of word play, unless one were to open a perm salon and call in Frizzolity. In conclusion, Doctor, Equality is unpunnable, at least for the moment. Perhaps if your next research project was to plunder the depths of the Chinese languages for information, with their 15 million words, you shall be able to find what you are looking for.

With kindest regards, your colleague,

Prof. E. Kwali, Team leader

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Source by Alex G Rowley