A pun on a pun
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Too Faced is a cosmetics company acquired by Estée Lauder in 2016. The name is obviously a pun, substituting too "to an excessive degree" for the two in two-faced "deceitful" — though too here apparently connects to the literal idea of a second face, more than to the idea of deceit or hypocrisy.
A couple of days ago, Rachel Strugatz wrote an article with the headline "Et Too Faced?", which relies on a second punning layer, connecting too to Latin tu in the quotation "Et tu, Brute?" from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
A decade after selling Too Faced to Estée Lauder, co-founder Jerrod Blandino has lately been chirping about the brand’s post-acquisition fate. Does the guy have a point?
I tried and failed to think of another case with multiple layers of punning like two ↔ too ↔ tu. Perhaps readers can think of some examples.
It's also tricky to find the metaphorical parallels between the fate of Blandino's company and the assassination of Caesar, if there are any beyond an accusation of participation in harm.
Olaf Zimmermann said,
August 8, 2026 @ 8:02 am
"Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me!" (Kenneth Williams' "immortal" line)
MJ said,
August 8, 2026 @ 10:04 am
How about this as something close?
The scene in Airplane with the deadpan male lines:
“Surely you can't be serious,"
“I am serious—and don't call me Shirley."
With the latter uttered by actor Leslie Nielsen, who had a traditionally female name.
TR said,
August 8, 2026 @ 10:44 am
Chapter 37 of John Brunner's The Jagged Orbit is titled "A Fiasco Is an Italian Bottle in Which Wines Are Served". Chapter 38 is titled "If You're Stuck with a Fiasco You Might as well Make Spectacles of Yourselves so that at Least You'll Have Some Glasses to Pour the Contents Into".
Olaf Zimmermann said,
August 8, 2026 @ 10:55 am
@MJ:
Close, but no cigar – the line I quoted was from Kenneth Williams playing Julius Caesar ('Carry on Cleo' [1964] – there's even a Wikipedia page about that one). So myl's associative chain was spot on (or how I do love mixed metaphors!)
Airplane! (1980) played to an entirely different audience.
Am I getting old?
Lars Skovlund said,
August 8, 2026 @ 11:39 am
I think these aren't really multilayered in the way that Mark describes. Mark describes a pun on a pun, while this is plain old homophony. But I'll contribute one of my own:
"Oh, are you from Wales? Do you know a fella named Jonah-He used to live in whales for a while" – Groucho Marx
KevinM said,
August 8, 2026 @ 12:15 pm
OK, I'll try: Ms. Clumsy wants to be a ballerina. Tutu funny.
Gabriel Holbrow said,
August 8, 2026 @ 1:32 pm
I have seen "mieliodories" in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake cited as a triple trilingual pun, reportedly combining French "miel" (honey), Irish "míle deóra" (thousand tears), and Greek δῶρος "dôros" related to δῶρον "dôron" (gift). I have never read any Joyce and do not know any Irish or Greek, so I cannot independently confirm the claim.
Y said,
August 8, 2026 @ 1:45 pm
I never thought a tiger et too faces… oh, never mind.
NW said,
August 8, 2026 @ 2:27 pm
Mention of Kenneth Williams reminds me of the most complicated Cockney rhyming slang: Aristotle rhymes with bottle, bottle and glass rhymes with arse, the rhyming part is omitted, so Aris (no totle) means arse.
Then in one of the sketches by the camp duo Julian and Sandy in the radio comedy Round the Horne (Williams played Sandy), the two were in the tailored clothing business, and Sandy enjoined Julian to show Mr Horne the Harris tweed, but of course omitting the H: 'Show him your 'arris, Jules.'
https://youtu.be/CwFfJAAXJDw
stephen said,
August 8, 2026 @ 7:34 pm
Phocas is an old Greek/Byzantine name, and the name of an old Greek farmer who emigrates to America with his family. He buys up some land and bequeaths it to his sons, who turn it into a cattle ranch which they name Phocas, because it's where the sons raise meat.
stephen said,
August 8, 2026 @ 7:42 pm
I asked duck.ai about a joke I've seen around.
Who first came up with this one?
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy."
Duck.ai replied thus:
The earliest traceable version of the “(full/free) bottle … (frontal/prefrontal) lobotomy” wordplay shows up in print in 1965, in Carlton W. Berenda’s book World Visions and the Image of Man: Cosmologies as Reflections of Man (the quote appears in the book as an “alternative” list). quoteinvestigator.com
After that, the joke is widely misattributed to comedians like Steve Allen and Fred Allen—but those attributions appear later than the 1965 printed match. quoteinvestigator.com
NSBK said,
August 9, 2026 @ 12:22 am
Here's my attempt at a "multi-layer" pun.
Imagine a company that sells solar-powered self-rolling 20-sided dice. They call themselves DicenSphere.
They have a bright, multicolor product that they call the TieDycenSphere.
Layer one pun is dice with Dys(on sphere).
Layer two pun is (tie-)dye with Di(cenSphere).
dye dice Dyson
Olaf Zimmermann said,
August 10, 2026 @ 9:59 am
Don't mess with my too[t] too[t].
Kate Bunting said,
August 10, 2026 @ 1:49 pm
"Actor Leslie Nielsen, who had a traditionally female name".
Leslie (from the Scottish surname) was a fairly common male name in 20th century Britain – the female version was spelled Lesley.
J.W. Brewer said,
August 10, 2026 @ 6:26 pm
The late Leslie Nielsen was born in 1926, in Canada. I don't know about the stats up there, but in the United States 1926-born boys named Leslie outnumbered girls with the same name by something like a 10:1 ratio. By 1946, the boy:girl ratio among newborn Leslies had reached parity and the girls subsequently pulled ahead. I think the slightly-older-than-me female Leslie who was a childhood neighbor of mine was born in 1963, by which year the newborn girls had achieved a roughly 80% market share.
Olaf Zimmermann said,
August 11, 2026 @ 5:13 am
@Kate Bunting:
Spot on! (thinking of Leslie Hearnshaw and my – manifestly female – colleague Lesley; same time).
Andrew Shields said,
August 26, 2026 @ 3:20 am
@Gabriel Holbrow
The sentence from Finnegans Wake is on page 25, lines 4-5:
Mieliodories, that Doctor Faherty, the madison man, taught to gooden you.