User blog:Mythigator/On My Soapbox: Pun vs. Parody

I see "pun" and "parody" mixed up here on a regular basis, so here's my attempt to set the record straight:

A pun is simply a play on words, a humorous twist of the language (or languages*) it's crafted in. A very lame and blindingly obvious example is that the duck made an appointment with a psychiatrist because he thought he was quacking up. A more subtle example is the woman having an affair with her shrink and writing all the sordid details in her diary, where she refers to the shrink as her psychiatryst.

A parody is a body of work that spoofs, insults and/or makes fun of another body of work. The songs of "Weird Al" Yankovic are a classic example, and there's even one on the show: In Three Gays of the Condo, Weird Al's song "Homer & Marge" is a parody of "Jack & Diane" by John Mellencamp.

When I see the terms mixed up, it's usually an episode (or segment) title being called a parody when it's actually a pun. A title is not a body of work, and therefore by definition cannot be a parody.

So, one more example to demonstrate. Take the segment "The Shinning" from Treehouse of Horror V: Any questions?
 * The segment title is a pun on The Shining. (Could be the Stephen King novel, the 1980 Kubrick movie, the 1997 TV miniseries, whatever)
 * The segment itself is a parody of the 1980 movie The Shining.

(* - Yes, there are such things as multilingual puns.)