Here are some funny epitaphs from real tombstones: Inspired by a Hastings Historical Society meeting:
Here lies
Ezekial Aikle
Age 102
The Good Die Young.
In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:
Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go.
In a London, England cemetery:
Here lies Ann Mann,
Who lived an old maid
But died an old Mann.
Dec. 8, 1767
In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna,
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:
Here lies
Johnny Yeast
Pardon me
For not rising.
Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.
In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:
Sacred to the memory of
my husband John Barnes
who died January 3, 1803
His comely young widow, aged 23, has many
qualifications of a good wife, and yearns to be comforted.
A lawyer’s epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.
Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the cowboy days of the 1880’s. He’s buried in the Boot Hill Cemeteryin Tombstone, Arizona:
Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a .44
No Les No More.
In a Georgia cemetery: “I told you I was sick!”
Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
Born 1903–Died 1942
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down.
It was.
Here lies John Doe, a gunslinger,
Buried in the raw,
For he was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw!
John Penny’s epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:
Reader, if cash thou art
In want of any,
Dig 6 feet deep;
And thou wilt find a Penny.
In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:
On the 22nd of June,
Jonathan Fiddle
Went out of tune
Anna Hopewell’s grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, reads:
Here lies the body of our Anna –
Done to death by a banana.
It wasn’t the fruit that laid her low,
But the skin of the thing that made her go.
On a grave from the 1880s in Nantucket, Massachusetts:
Under the sod and under the trees,
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there’s only the pod.
Pease shelled out and went to God.
In an English cemetery:
Remember man, as you walk by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, you soon will be.
Prepare yourself and follow me.
(To which someone replied by writing on the tombstone: To follow you I’ll not consent, Until I know which way you went.)
OXYMORONS
An oxymoron (plurals: oxymorons and oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction. As a rhetorical device, an oxymoron illustrates a point to communicate and reveal a paradox. According to one source the word ‘oxymoron’ comprises two Greek words that mean “sharp” and “dull”.
Perhaps you can add to this list:
- Return again 2. Extradite back 3. Right Bad (from Nova Scotia, down east) 4. Pretty ugly 5. Same difference 6. In sane 7. Iced tea 8. Progressive conservative 9. Anarchy club 10. A little big problem 11. Freedom of information 12. Free trade 13. Awfully good 14. Terribly good 15. Sweet sorrow 16. Bitter sweet 17. Artificial intelligence 18. Army intelligence 20. Act naturally 21. Clearly confused 22. Civil war 23. Conspicuous absence 24. Constant variable 25. Deafening silence 26. Definite maybe 27. Even odds 28. Exact estimate 29. Found missing 30. Freezer burn 31. Friendly takeover 32. Good grief (Charlie Brown!) 33. Growing smaller 34. Idiot savant 35. Jumbo shrimp 36. Lead balloon 37. Living dead 38. Living sacrifice 39. Loyal opposition 40. Minor miracle 41. Negative growth 42. Negative income 43. Old news 44. Only choice 45. Open secret 46. Paper towel 47. Random order 48. Seriously funny 49. Small crowd 50. Sounds of silence 51. Soft rock 52. Steel wool 53. Student teacher 54. Theoretical experience 55. True fiction 56. Unbiased opinion 57. Virtual reality 58. Wise fool 59. Working vacation 60. Add yours
