Question

When people say “No pun intended”, what does that mean?

Answer 1

Hint: A pun is a play on words in which one word is substituted for another, resulting in a ridiculous statement. A pun is a figure of speech that uses words with numerous meanings or words that sound similar but significantly different things to make a joke. When comedic novelist Douglas Adams writes, "You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish," he employs both sorts of pun.

Complete answer:
“No pun intended” means –
When someone says no pun intended, it's when they say something that might be interpreted in two ways: one obvious and one slightly "odd," and they want you to know they're not putting a deliberate play on words and that you should take what they said at face value:
For instance, a man challenges his friend to kiss a huge woman, to which his friend responds, "Fat chance! No pun intended."
At first glance, “no pun intended” implies that, while the speaker may have unintentionally made a play on words, it was entirely unintentional.

Another example is when a speaker wants to disassociate himself from a horrible pun that didn't go over well. Simply put, if someone makes a joke that everyone groans at, the speaker can humbly say, "no pun intended," and backtrack a little.

Usage -
Consider the following scenario:
“Where should I carry out the dare?”
“Over here, over dare,” says the narrator. I don't care.”
The speaker created a pun in the previous line by using the similarity in pronunciation between the word’s "dare" and "there."
Puns, on the other hand, are frequently regarded with derision, particularly among the younger generation.
They're regarded as the easiest jokes to create, or the "low-hanging fruit," because they don't require a lot of wit or intelligence to come up with.

Note: Puns can be classified as inside jokes or idiomatic expressions because their meaning and usage are usually limited to a single language or culture. Puns have been used in human writing for a long time. Plautus, the Roman playwright, was known for his puns and word games, for example.