Welcome to the Punpedia entry on ocean puns! 🌊 Whether you’re after some puns for your beach party invites, instagram captions, or you just like puns about the sea, I hope this entry serves you well. There’s word play around all sorts of ocean-related concepts including wave puns, seashell puns, sand puns and lots more. This entry has a lot in common with the beach puns, water puns and fish puns entries, so check them out if you don’t find what you’re looking for here 🙂
Ocean Puns List
Each item in this list describes a pun, or a set of puns which can be made by applying a rule. If you know of any puns about the ocean that we’re missing, please let us know in the comments at the end of this page! Without further ado, here’s the list of ocean puns:
- Specific → Pacific: As in “You need to be more pacific.” and “Are you sure you have the pacifications for this?” and “Pacifically, there are two apples and three nectarines”.
- *ways → *waves: Words than end in “ways” can be made into bad wave puns: alwaves (always), railwaves (railways), sidewaves, pathwaves, lengthwaves, doorwaves.
- Waive → Wave: As in, “Could you wave this parking ticket?” Note: to waive something is to refrain from enforcing.
- Sway → S-wave: As in, “S-wave with me,” and “You don’t hold any s-wave here.” Note: to hold sway is to have a position of influence or power.
- Surf: “Surf the net”
- Serve → Surf: As in “First come, first surfed” and “If memory surfs” and “Revenge is a dish best surfed cold” and “Surfs you right”
- Service → Surfice: As in, “A better surfice all round,” and “At your surfice,” and “Normal surfice has been resumed,” and “Out of surfice.”
- Wave: “Wave goodbye” and “Mexican wave” and “Heat wave” and “Wave the white flag” and “Brain waves“
- Title → Tidal: As in “I like it, but I’m not sure on the tidal” and “Use ‘Ms.’ as her tidal” and “The championship tidal match is tomorrow morning.”
- Tied → Tide: As in “I’m tide up at the moment, can someone else help?” and “Yep, they tide the knot!”
- Passivist → Pascificist: As in “I’m a pascificst. Violence is never the answer.”
- Atlantic: There is a well-known newspaper called “The Atlantic”, which might be used to make an Atlantic ocean pun somehow.
- Deep: “Deep and meaningful” and “Deep, dark secret” and “Go off the deep end” and “In deep water” and “Skin deep” and “Thrown into the deep end”
- Total → Turtle: As in “A turtle stranger”
- Tidy → Tidey: As in “After the party we need to tidey the beach.”
- Send → Sand: As in “It sands shivers down my spine!” and “Sand him over here.”
- San* → Sand*: Replacing “san” with “sand” when it is at the start of a word give some nice corny puns: sanditary (sanitary), sandctioned (sanctioned), sandctuary (sanctuary), sandguine (sanguine), sandctions (sanctions).
- Stand → Sand: As in, “Don’t sand so close to me,” and “Do you undersand?” and “Don’t just sand there!” and “I saw her sanding there,” and “My hair was sanding on end,” and “If you can’t sand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” and “It sands to reason,” and “A one night sand,” and “Sand on your own two feet,” and “Sand out from the crowd,” and “Sand up and be counted,” and “Sand up for yourself,” and “A sand up guy,” and “Do I sand a chance?” and “I sand corrected,” and “I’m sanding in for…” and “I can’t sand the sight of,” and “I could do it sanding on my head,” and “United we sand.”
- Not → Naut: As in “I’m naut going to keep arguing with you”.
- Naughty → Nauty: As in “There’s that nauty sailor again”.
- Gullible → Seagullible: As in “Kyani is so seagullible!”
- Crazy → Cray-sea: As in “He is so craysea!” and “Enough of this crayseaness!”. Hyphen is, of course, optional.
- Wish → Fish: As in “I just fish we had more time!” and “If you rub the lamp you get three fishes“.
- About/Abode → Aboat: As in “What aboat the captain?” and “Welcome to my aboat!”
- Sooner → Schooner: As in “Schooner or later.” and “I’ll call her schoon“. A “schooner” is a sailing ship with two or more masts. See the boat puns entry for more.
- Sel* → Sail*: If a word starts with “sel” a boat pun can often be made by replacing it with “sail”: sailection (selection), sailect (select), sailf (self), sailling (selling), sail (sell), saildom (seldom), sailfish (selfish), sailfless (selfless), sailective (selective).
- Bae → Bay: As in “Bay! Please stop with the ocean puns, you’re embarrassing me.”
- Bitch → Beach: As in “Those beaches don’t know me!” and “He says you were being a bit beachy“.
- Combine → Combrine: As in “With our power combrined we should be able to defeat them.” and “It’s what you get when you combrine salt and water”. Similar puns can be made for most words ending in “bine”: turbrine (turbine), concubrine (concubine), columbrine (columbine).
- Sure → Shore: As in “Are you shore?” and “She shore is strong!” and “I shore will.”
- Whatever → Waterever: As in “Waterever, I don’t care.” and “Do waterever you want”.
- What her → Water: As in “I know water problem is.” and “Do you know water mother thinks about this?”.
- What do → Water: As in “Water you think about this?”
- What about → Water boat: As in “Water boat we have tofu curry for dinner tonight?” and “Water boat Ching? Does she want to come to the beach too?”
- What are → Water: “Water you doing out so late tonight?” and “Water you doing tomorrow?”
- What are we → Watery: As in “Watery going to do?” and “Watery doing today, friends?”
- Salt: “Take it with a pinch/grain of salt” and “Rub salt in the wound” and “Worth one’s salt“
- Salty: “You’re just salty because I beat you at chess earlier.”
- Boy → Buoy: As in “It’s a buoy!” and “His buoyfriend is a nice person”.
- See → Sea: As in, “As far as the eye can sea” and “Can’t sea beyond the end of your nose” and “Can’t sea the wood for the trees” and “Come and sea me sometime.”
- She → Sea: As in, “Ain’t sea sweet?” and “Sea doesn’t belong to anyone.”
- Say → Sea: “As the sea-ing goes” and “Computer seas no” and “Have the final sea” and “I’m hearing what you sea.”
- Sea*: Most words starting with “sea” are easy sea puns: season, seasonal, seated, searingly, sealants, seam, seatbelt.
- See* → Sea*: If a word starts with “see” it can often be replaced with “sea” to create a simple sea pun: seaminly, seads, seaker, seathe, seap, seak, sean, sea (see).
- Sealant / Sealing / Seal: Easy seal puns can be made with words starting with “seal” (e.g. sealant, seal) or “ceil” (e.g. sealing).
- Se* → Sea*: Some words that start with just “se” also have a “sea”-ish sound, and the ones that don’t can usually be made into terrible puns anyway: seacret, searious, seargeant, seacretion, seacure, seacurity, seacondary, seacretariat, seaconds, seacrete, searum, searenity, searvitude, seanile, seadation, seaclusion, seacretive, seaze, seaquential, sealection, seacretly, seaquences, seanior, seaniority, seagregate, seaping, seacession, seariousness, seaminars, seaveral, seaxual, seaparation, seantimental, seansational, seaquential, seacluded, seacularist, seathing, seaquin, seasame, seaclusion.
- Se*cy/Ce*cy → Sea*sea: Most words that start with “se” or “ce” and end with “cy” can be double sea puns: seacresea (secrecy), sealibasea (celibacy).
- *cy → *sea: If a word ends in “cy” it’s an easy “sea” pun: polisea, agensea, democrasea, currensea, emergensea, efficiensea, tendensea, frequensea, fansea, constituensea, pregnansea, accurasea, redundansea, bureaucrasea, presidensea, legasea, conspirasea, mersea, privasea, bankruptsea, consistensea, literasea, urgensea, deficiensea, dependency, consultansea, tenacity, isea (icy), secrecy, intimasea.
- Seizure → Seazure: As in “If I read one more ocean pun I’m going to have a seazure.”
- Confiscate → Conch-fish-scate: As in “I’m going to have to conchfishcate your pun licence for that one.”
- *fici* → *fishi*: If a word contains “fici” it can often be replaced with “fishi”. Here are some examples: affishionado, artifishial, benefishial, coeffishient, defishiency, defishit, ineffishient, suffishient, ofishial, profishient, superfishial.
- Issue → Fishue: As in “That’s not the fishue here though.” and “I was fishued a sign for parking without a ticket”.
- Net: “net” has two senses: “net weight” and “net income” is one sense, and “fish net” is the other sense.
- Bereft → Bereeft: “bereft of” means “deprived of” of “lacking”. So an example sentence might be: “The old, stark beach house of bereefed of colour”.
- Enemy → Anemone: As in “They’re my worst anemones” and “Let’s not make anemones of each other!”.
- Simmer → Swimmer: As in “I left the pot swimmering and now my vegetable curry is burnt!” and “Hey swimmer down, there’s no need to turn this into a fight”.
- *sip* → *ship*: If a word contains “sip” it can usually be replaced with “ship”. For example: gosship (gossip), dishipate (dissipate), shipping (sipping), inshipid (insipid). See the boat puns entry for more.
- *sib* → *ship*: If a word contains “sib” it can usually be replaced with “ship” to create a terrible pun. For example: posshiply (possibly), accesshipility (accessibility), incomprehenshiple, feashipble, irresponshipble, invishipble, ostenshipbly, revershipble, vishipble. An example sentence might be: “I am responshiple for my puns.” See the boat puns entry for more.
- Kill → Keel: As in “We can be healthy with plants, keeling animals is not necessary.”
- Seal: “I sealed the deal” and “Seal of approval” and “Seal your fate”
- Island: As in, “No man is an island,” and “Treasure island,” and “A tropical island.”
- I land → Island: As in “Islanded a job at that new tech company.”
- Aligned → Island: As in and “Our incentives are well-island.”
- Choppy: This term is an adjective that describes something that has many abrupt transitions – e.g. “Choppy prose”, but it is also commonly used to describe the ocean when it has many small waves.
- Coast: “The coast is clear” and “I’m just coasting“
- Pawn/Pwn → Prawn: This pun can be used in the gamer-culture sense: “I got prawned by a pro last night”, in the chess sense “He moved his prawn to C4″, and in the pawnbroker sense: “I had to prawn all my stuff to pay for college.”
- Kid* → Squid*: The prefix “kid” can be replaced with “squid” as follows: squidding (kidding), squidnapped (kidnapped), squidney (kidney), squid (kid).
- ?id* → Squid*: If a word begins with “?id” where ‘?’ represents any letter, then this prefix can sometimes be replaced with “squid”. For example: squiddle (middle), squidlife crisis (midlife crisis), squidget (midget), squiddle (riddle), squidiculous (ridiculous), squideotape (videotape), squiddish (yiddish), squidth (width), squidow (widow), squidget (widget).
- Well/Welcome → Whale/Whalecome: As in “Whalecome to our home!” and “Whale, whale, whale, what do we have here?”. Whale puns can be made with many more words like welfare (whalefare), welsh (whalesh) and wellness (whaleness). Check out the entry on whale puns for more.
- Wail → Whale: As in “Poor thing, he’s been whaling over his grandmother who recently passed.” and “A good whale can help one overcome grief”.
- While → Whale: As in “Whale we agreed on most points, we did have some disagreements.” and “All the whale …” and “Whistle whale you work”.
- Help → Kelp: As in “Can you please kelp me build a sand castle?” and “Katie, kelp your brother lift that please”.
- Purpose → Porpoise: As in “I didn’t do it on porpoise!” and “Clarity of porpoise” and “What is the porpoise of this?” See the dolphin puns entry for more.
- What is → Waters: As in “Waters going on here?” and “Waters the porpoise of this?”
- Defin* → Dolphin: As in “We dolphinitely need more time to finish the mission.” and “What is the dolphinition of this word?” and “Please dolphine this word.” and “It’s the dolphinitive source of Nordic history.” See the dolphin puns entry for more.
- Endorphines → Endolphins: As in “I love that rush of endolphins you get after a good hard swimming session.”
- Humanity → Humanatee: As in “If only we could have some humanatee in our treatment of sea animals” and “Have some humanatee“. Note that terrible puns can also be made of insanity (insmanatee) and profanity (profmanatee).
- In* → Fin*: A lovely and shameful pun can be made from any word starting with “in”. Simply replace “in” with “fin”: finformation, finfluence, finvolve, finternational, finvolved, fintroduce, findeed, finvestment, finto, finclude, finteresting, fintellectual, finjury, fintend, finterview, finsurance, finstrument, … Thousand more can be made with the help of a list like this. You can also check out the entry on dolphin puns for more puns of this nature.
- Imp* → Shrimp*: If a word starts with “imp”, you can usually replace it with “shrimp”, for example: shrimportant (important), shrimpossible (impossible), shrimply (imply), shrimpose (you get the idea), shrimpose, shrimport, shrimpudent, shrimpact, shrimperfect, shrimpaled, shrimpartial, shrimpart. Shrimp puns probably deserve their own entry, but until then you can use this list to help you.
- Symb* → Shrimpb*: Replacing the suffix “symb” with “shrimpb” gives some pleasantly jarring shrimp pins: shrimpbolic (symbolic), shrimpbolises (symbolises), shrimpbiosis (symbiosis).
- Should* → Shoald*: A “shoal” can refer to a large group of fish, or an area of shallow water, or an underwater sand bank. We can use “shoal” be used to make puns like: shoald (should), shoalder (shoulder), shoaldering.
- Show l* → Shoal: This is a subtle one because it involves a word break. Whenever you use the word “show”, and the following word starts with an “L”, then you can replace “show” with “shoal” (a shoal is a large school of fish). For example: “That’s cool! You should shoal Liam.” and “She laughs when we shoal little blue flowers to her.”.
- *tual* → *shoal*: As mentioned above, A “shoal” can refer to a large group of fish, or an area of shallow water, or an underwater sand bank. If a word contains “tual” it can often be replaced with “shoal” for a cute little pun: actshoal (actual), actshoality (actuality), intellectshoal (intellectual), ritshoal (ritual), spiritshoal, mutshoally, eventshoal, eventshoally, conceptshoal, conceptshoalise, virtshoal, contractshoal, factshoal, factshoally, perpetshoal, textshoal, contextshoal, perceptshoal, punctshoal, instinctshoal, actshoally, habitshoally.
- *sole → *shoal: As in “The shoal of my shoe is worn down.” and “Your new gaming conshoal is cool.” and “Yeah, he’s a bit of an asshoal.”
- More → Moray: As in “Mum, we need moray sunscreen!”.
- Mor* → Moor*: Words that begin with the “more” sound can be turned into a pun on the boat-related word, moor (meaning “to tie a boat to the shore or an anchor”): moore, moorning, moortgage, mooral, moortality, moorale, moortar, moorphine, moorgue, moorphologically.
- *pear → *pier: As in “Then all of a sudden she dissapiered!” and “After appiering to check his watch, he quickly ran away.” and “That is a sharp spier you’ve got there”.
- Brilliant → Krilliant: As in “Isn’t the weather just krilliant today?” Krill are small shrimp-like plankton.
- Brilliant → Brill-iant: “Brill” are a type of European flatfish.
- Angrily→ Ankrilly: As in “The monster roared ankrilly“.
- Hungrily→ Hunkrilly: As in “She hunkrilly ate the sweet potato slices”.
- Serf → Surf: A serf was a sort of slave in medieval times who worked for a feudal lord. It’s sometimes used as an insult.
- *cial → *shell: When a word has “cial” as a suffix, this suffix can usually be swapped out for “shell” to create a shell pun: soshell (social), speshell (special), offishell (official), finanshell, commershell, crushell, judishell, artifishell, provinshell, rashell, benefishell, superfishell, fashell, glashell, sacrifishel, antisoshell.
- Shall→ Shell: As in “Shell I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and “He who lives by the sword shell die by the sword.”
- Selfish → Shellfish: As in “Stop being so shellfish.” See the next item for a generalisation of this pun.
- Sel* → Shell*: If a word starts with “sel” a shell pun can be made by switching it with “shell”. For example: shellection (selection), shellect (select), shelldom (seldom), shellfless (selfless).
- Harbour: As in, “Harbour a grudge,” and “Safe harbour.”
- Pier: As in, “Take a long walk off a short pier.”
- Peer → Pier: As in, “Pier pressure,” and “Pier-ing through the curtains.”
Ocean-Related Words
Here’s a list of ocean-related concepts to help you come up with your own ocean puns:
wave, surf, beach, water, sea, Arctic, Pacific, Indian, Atlantic, Antarctic, deep, shallow, deep blue, deep sea, ship, dolphin, shark, turtle, whale, fish, starfish, crab, seal, penguin, island, choppy, swell, hydrosphere, mariana trench, coastal, coast, coral, shore, seawater, saltwater, salty, salt, underwater, bay, archipelago, pelagic zone, sea bed, oceanic, marine, kelp, seaward, waters, cape, planktonic, shorline, seashore, lobster, reef, benthic, demersal, aphotic, photic, epipelagic, mesopelagic, liquid, seashell, oceanview, continental shelf, sail, sailing, boat, depths, littoral, bermuda, submerged, driftwood, seaspray, swim, estuary, floating, high seas, tide, sea gull, gull, penguin, shrimp, harbour, high tide, manta ray, transatlantic, oceanic, brine, oceanography, transpacific, canal, seascape, nemo, dory, albatross, barnacle, offshore
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