Tom Swifties

A Tom Swifty (or Tom Swiftie) is a phrase in which a quoted sentence is linked by a pun to the manner in which it is attributed. Tom Swifties may be considered a type of wellerism.

The name comes from the Tom Swift series of books (1910–present), similar in many ways to the better-known Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, and, like them, produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. In this series, the young scientist hero underwent adventures involving rocket ships, ray-guns and other things he had invented.

A stylistic idiosyncrasy of at least some books in this series was that the author, "Victor Appleton," went to great trouble to avoid repetition of the unadorned word "said"; elegant variation used a different quotative verb, or modifying adverbial words or phrases. Since many adverbs end in "ly" this kind of pun was originally called a Tom Swiftly, the archetypal example being "'We must hurry,' said Tom Swiftly." At some point, this kind of humor was called a Tom Swifty, and that name is now more prevalent.

This excerpt (with emphasis added) from the 1910 novel Tom Swift and His Airship illustrates the style:

The Tom Swifty, then, is a parody of this style with the incorporation of a pun.

A much earlier example may be found, for example, in Dickens' Our Mutual Friend:

Tom Swifties can be conveniently converted to limericks. Two examples of this (by O.V. Michaelsen):

The standard syntax is for the quoted sentence to be first, followed by the description of the act of speaking. The hypothetical speaker is usually, by convention, called "Tom" (or "he" or "she"), unless some other name is needed for the pun (as in the Marie Curie and Lord Nelson examples above).

Tom Swifties first came to prominence in the United States with the 1963 publication of the book "Tom Swifties" by Paul Pease and Bill McDonough. The spread of Tom Swifties was abetted by an article in the May 31, 1963 edition of TIME Magazine, which also announced a contest for its readers to submit their own Tom Swifties. Included was a special category, "TIME Swifties," which were to contain a reference to TIME Magazine however, only a few submissions were made of this nature. Among the submissions that were subsequently printed was "Someone has stolen my movie camera!" Tom bellowed and howled.

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