pun--eight nickels=2 paradigms. why??

[IQU3838]

Hi there,

As a non-English native speaker, I really don't get this pun, could you please help me out?

Thank you very much.

Why, 8 nickels=2 paradigms ??

 

[jlinger]

US and Canadian coins are penny (1c), nickle (5c), dime (10c), quarter (25c) etc.
Eight nickles (40c) equals two pair (four) of dimes, or 4 x 10c = 40cents.

 

[Rover_KE]

This is a very bad pun, IQU.

So bad, it's hardly worth the trouble of explaining it.

It depends on your knowing that paradigm is pronounced para-dime.

Even so, we have to torture the pronunciation of two paradigms into sounding like 'two pairs of dimes'.

Terrible.

Rover

 

[Raymott]

This is a very bad pun, IQU.

So bad, it's hardly worth the trouble of explaining it.

It depends on your knowing that paradigm is pronounced para-dime.

Even so, we have to torture the pronunciation of two paradigms into sounding like 'two pairs of dimes'.

Terrible.

Rover

Yes, it's a worthless pun, but I think some American accents wouldn't need much torturing to achieve it.
It doesn't work in my accent either though.

 

[Johnson_F]

Even so, we have to torture the pronunciation of two paradigms into sounding like 'two pairs of dimes'.

In the informal speech of such a punster, 'two pair o' dimes' is surely not unlikely.

That seems to make sense.

(Forty of them, perhaps.)

 

[Ouisch]

::::slinking away in shame, as I actually used a similar pun in a business meeting once::::: This guy had droned on for 30 minutes using every corporate buzzword known to the Fortune 500: "Blah blah blah risk profile blah blah blah promote the customer to trusted advisor status blah blah blah paradigm." One attendee asked "What's a 'paradigm'?" and I answered "Twenty cents." (True, "paradigm" in the singular doesn't sound exactly like "pair of dimes", but one grabs whatever laughs one can get during excrutiating meetings.)

In a similar vein, while at the hospital recently chatting in the corridor with a surgeon, he invited me into his office. Pointing at the sign on the door listing the two cariologists who shared the suite I told him "This place houses a true paradox." ("Pair of docs", get it?! :rofl: Hello? ::::tap tap:::: Is this microphone working?) Hmmm, I guess I'll hold off on my "paradise"/"pair of dice" joke.....

 

[Johnson_F]

And I thought that puerile punning was a plebeian pastime of pathetic past-its from our periphery of the pond.

Ouisch has Nonsch-alantly proved me wrong.