The Tom Swifty Wellerism

Cover illustration for TOM SWIFT and His Giant Robot,

volume 4 of the Tom Swift, Jr. series authored by Victor Appleton II

Tom Swifties are a special kind of pun, a type of Wellerism. Sam Weller in Charles Dickens' "Pickwick Papers" (1836-7) was prone to producing punning sentences such as: 'Out with it, as the father said to the child when he swallowed a farden [farthing]'. This type of verbal play, involving a metaphorical and a punningly literal sense, soon gained popularity under the name of wellerism, and a craze for devising such expressions rapidly sprang up on both sides of the Atlantic. A Tom Swifty is a Wellerism in which an adverb relates both properly and punningly to a sentence of reported speech. The quip takes its name from Tom Swift, a boy's adventure hero created by the prolific American writer Edward L. Stratemeyer. Under the pseudonym Victor Appleton, he published a series of books featuring the young Tom Swift. Tom Swift rarely passed a remark without a qualifying adverb as "Tom added eagerly" or "Tom said jokingly". The play on words discussed here arose as a pastiche of this, coming to be known by the term Tom Swifty.

Here are some fun examples ~

1. "The doctor had to remove my left ventricle," said Tom half-heartedly.
2. "Your Honour, you're crazy!" said Tom judgementally.
3. "Elvis is dead," said Tom expressly.
4. "I swallowed some of the glass from that broken window," Tom said painfully.
5. "My garden needs another layer of mulch," Tom repeated.
6. "You must be my host," Tom guessed.
7. "I've only enough carpet for the hall and landing," said Tom with a blank stare.
8. "Don't let me drown in Egypt!" pleaded Tom, deep in denial.
9. "I have a split personality," said Tom, being frank.
10. "I love hot dogs," said Tom with relish.
11. "There seems to be at least one blood-sucking insect in every outhouse," said Tom aloofly.
12. "I have to keep this fire alight," Tom bellowed.
13. "Rowing hurts my hands," said Tom callously.

I can only imagine that looking for the Wellerisms in these Jr. Adventure books made reading the series all the more enjoyable for the boys of the 1950's! There are over 500 Tom Swifties listed on the fun-with-words.com website if you would like to read more. This is also where I got all my info here.

And if you want to review the other words games I've done, such as oxymorons, pleonasms and idioms, click HERE!

And, if you can think of any on your own, "Congratulations; you graduated," said Betsy diplomatically. Get it? haha. :)