A’Phabet Day / No “L” Day Date in the current year: December 25, 2025

A pun is a word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term or similar-sounding words for an unexpected rhetorical or humorous effect. Unlike malapropisms, which involve the incorrect use of words and phrases, puns involve words and phrases with multiple interpretations that are correct or at least fairly reasonable.

Linguists divide puns into several different types. For example, a homophonic pun is a play on non-synonymous words that sound identical or at least very similar. A notable example of a homophonic pun is George Carlin’s phrase “atheism is a non-prophet institution”, in which the word “profit” was replaced by its homophone “prophet”, resulting in a new meaning.

Homographic puns take advantage of words that have the same spelling but different pronunciations and meanings. Unlike homophonic puns, they rely on sight rather than hearing. Homonymic puns exploit words that are both homophones and homographs, meaning that they are spelled and pronounced the same and have different (often completely unrelated) meanings.

A compound (or compounded) pun is a combination of two or more puns in one statement, or two phrases that share a word, such as “Where do mathematicians go on weekends? To a Möbius strip club!” In recursive puns, the second half of the pun is based on an element in the first half, such as “Immanuel doesn’t pun, he Kant” (attributed to Oscar Wilde).

In visual puns at least one aspect of the pun is replaced by an image. Visual puns have been used in heraldry for centuries; also known as canting arms, they represent the bearer’s name in a visual form. Paranosmatic puns exploit well-known phrases, proverbs, or idioms for an unexpected humorous twist.

Metonymic puns are based on metonymy – a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used to refer to something closely associated with it. The humor of such puns often comes from the unexpected yet apt connection between the two concepts or things. In sylleptic (heteronymic) puns a single word simultaneously affects the rest of the phrase and/or is used in both its literal and figurative meanings. Finally, in antanaclasistic puns a single word or phrase is repeated several times, each time changing its meaning.

No “L” Day, or A’Phabet Day, is a celebration of puns inspired by a homophonic pun: Noël, the French name for Christmas, sounds just like “No L”, hence No “L” Day. And if you take the L out of the alphabet, you get A’Phabet Day. The origins of this punny holiday are unclear, but it was probably created by someone who loves puns and takes every opportunity to have fun with them.

You can celebrate this amazing holiday by looking up interesting puns on the Internet, making up new puns, and not using the letter and sound “L” for the entire day (we wonder how long it will take for someone to catch up and wonder what’s going on).