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"Miss X" Pun - TV Tropes

  • ️Wed Mar 30 2022

"Miss X" Pun (trope)

A stock pun — misspelling words that begin with "mis-" by replacing the latter with the honorifics "Miss" or "Ms" (for example, "Miss Spelling"). Usually, this is done because the phrase pertains to a woman, often young. It can be her Punny Name or alias, a Pun-Based Title, or simply done in dialogue to refer to a character.

In most cases, the latter half of the word has something to do with the character or work. The pun can be meaningful or ironic depending on how it's read — the aforementioned "Miss Spelling" could be very bad at spelling (because her name plays on misspelling) or very good at spelling (since "spelling" is in her name).

This trope is Gender Neutral. While "Miss" is the most common honorific subject to punning (due to the large number of words that begin with "mis-", and the relatively common application of applying it to beauty pageant winners who are referred to as "Miss" Something anyway), it can also apply to puns based around other honorifics, including masculine ones (eg. "Sir Prize" = "surprise"), though such examples tend to forgo any irony for the sake of the pun.

Compare Mistaken for Name, Sir Verb-a-Lot, Mister Descriptor, and Mister Strangenoun. Not to be confused with Miss Conception, although that trope name is an example of thisnote .

Examples:

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Anime & Manga 

  • Invoked in Assassination Classroom. The students nickname the professor "Korosensei" as a pun on "Korosenai", meaning "Cannot be killed", and "Sensei", the Japanese Honorific for a teacher.
  • Fighting Foodons: One of King Gorge's Foodons is Sir Loin, a cow-like warrior made from animating a kobe steak.
  • HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!: The character that tells Megumi that Hime is a threat is named Miss Fortune. It turns out that her real identity is a Pretty Cure named Cure Fortune.
  • Yotsuba&! has the character Hiwatari, a friend of Fuuka. Due to an incident where she bungled introducing herself in class, her nickname is "Miss Stake". This is a Woolseyism; in the original Japanese, her nickname is "Shimau", because she introduced herself with yoroshiku onegaishimau ("please take care of me with regret") rather than yoroshiku onegaishimasu ("please take care of me," a standard introduction).

Comic Books 

  • The Books of Magic: The minor supernatural character named Mister E.
  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe: The French translation renames Magicka de Spell as Miss Tique (Miss Tick).
  • InvestiGators: Book 4 has Mango consulting the services of a mystic, who turns out to be a tick named Miss Tick. Or rather she was Miss Tick; she recently got married and is now a Mrs. which she's glad about because it means people will stop getting her mixed up with Miss Stick (who is a stick).
  • Legion of Super-Heroes: During a brief period when both heroes weren’t part of the active roster, Star Boy and Dream Girl rejoined the team under the pseudonyms "Sir Prize" and "Miss Terious".
  • Madballs: Miss Tic is appropriately a mystic.
  • Mr. A: Mr. A is an example, with a variation in pronunciation.
  • Ms. Tree: Ms. Tree is a female Hardboiled Detective.

Films — Live-Action 

  • A double one in Batman Forever. When solving the riddles he's been sent he realises that numerically they represent M,R & E or Mr.E ("Mystery") for Mr Edward Nygma whose name is already a pun on Enigma which means mystery.
  • Carry On Girls: The film opens with an animated sequence showing the opening credits against a backdrop of cartoons of bikini-clad girls with titles such as Miss Conduct, Miss Represent, Miss Conception, Miss Hap, Miss Fortune, Miss Used, Miss Shaped, Miss Trust, Miss Handled, Miss Manage, Miss Placed, Miss Spent, Miss Stake, Miss Demeanour and Miss Adventure.
  • Miss Conception is about a woman who desperately tries to conceive after learning she will only be fertile for one more month.
  • Mississippi Burning: One of the Federal agents tells the other that Mississippi stood for Miss Is Hippie.

Literature 

  • Captain Underpants: All the teachers in Jerome Horwitz Elementary have names that follow the "title + fragment" format that forms a punny name when read out: Ms. Ribble ("miserable"), Mr. Fyde ("mystified"), Mr. Meaner ("misdemeanor"), Mr. Rected ("misdirected"), etc. As a bonus, the teachers' full names also form a different, equally unflattering, pun.
  • The Tiffany Aching Discworld novels feature Miss Perspicacia Tick, a.k.a. Miss Tick, a witch, teacher, and "witch finder" who travels the lowlands identifying girls who have the gifts and potential to become witches so they can be properly trained. Her name is a pun on "mystic". This gets heavily lampshaded when she introduces herself in The Wee Free Men (left unstated is that "Tick" on its own is actually a good name for a witch who is also a teacher):

    Miss Tick: It's a good name for a witch, of course.
    Tiffany: You mean blood-sucking parasite?
    Miss Tick: I'm sorry?
    Tiffany: Ticks. Sheep get them. But if you use turpentine—
    Miss Tick: I meant that it sounds like "mystic".
    Tiffany: Oh, you mean a pune, or play on words. In that case it would be even better if you were Miss Teak, a dense foreign wood, because that would sound like "mystique", or you could be Miss Take, which would—
    Miss Tick: I can see we’re going to get along like a house on fire. There may be no survivors.

  • In The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School, the trainee superhero protagonist encounters a trainee supervillain who goes by Miss Steps; her power is a form of telekinesis, which she uses to create blocks of solid air, with various applications including the one she takes her name from: arranging them into invisible staircases and walkways so she can elevate herself and walk around on apparently thin air.
  • The children's book Miss Alaineus is about a student who mishears the vocabulary word "miscellaneous" as "Miss Alaineus". After humiliating herself by doing a presentation on what she thinks "Miss Alaineus" means, she bemoans that she's a mistake who should dress up as "Miss Stake" for the school's Vocabulary Parade. This gives her mom an idea: the protagonist dresses up as "Miss Alaineus" for the parade, carrying a basket of random objects and calling herself the "queen of all miscellaneous things." On the last page, the protagonist decides that next year, she'll dress as "Miss Sterious, investigator of all things mysterious."
  • One of Steve Martin's children's books about mnemonics plays on this with its title: Miss Pell Never Misspells.
  • A footnote in Puzzlecraft tells of two burlesque dancers known professionally as the Yes Sisters: Miss Elaine Yes ("miscellaneous") and Miss Teri Yes ("mysterious").
  • School! Adventures at the Harvey N. Trouble Elementary School: Miss Ingashoe's name is a pun on "missing a shoe", and fittingly enough, she always walks around with only one shoe on until her other shoe is found at the end of the book.
  • Sir Cumference is a series of children's books about the titular knight and his math-related adventures.
  • The Xanth books take place in a World of Pun, so these sorts of names are a dime a dozen. In the beginning of Up In A Heaval", Umlaut is trying to get away from some trouble, so asks the following women for directions; A lady in an explorer's cap called Miss Guide, a shapely lady named Miss In Form, and a lady in a many-feathered bonnet named Miss Chief. Thinking about their names- Misguide, misinform, mischief -Umlaut realizes that he probably shouldn't follow their advice.

Live-Action TV 

  • Elementary: The episode "Miss Taken" (punning on mistaken) is about someone impersonating a young woman of interest to the detectives. The same character later reappears in a Sequel Episode, "Miss Understood".
  • Kyla May Miss Behaves: The Australian children's series is named after the protagonist's nickname at school, Miss Behaves, because she's often in trouble for zoning out in class and daydreaming, and losing track of her homework assignments. While she does get better at staying focused and getting her work done, the nickname sticks, and she mostly wears it as a badge of honor.
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The third season featured a fire chief-themed Monster of the Week called "Miss Chief".
  • Sesame Street: One skit features a woman named Miss Nomer (first name Ida).
  • Torchwood: Miracle Day: In the Separated by a Common Language scene, Gwen calls Esther "Miss Translation".
  • 3rd Rock from the Sun: In one episode, after learning about Earth gender, Dick and Sally play a game of naming gendered Earth concepts like Mother Earth and Father Time. For one of her turns, Sally picks "Mrs. Sippi" (Mississippi).

Music 

  • AC/DC had in their album Rock or Bust the song "Miss Adventure".
  • Englebert Humperdinck's 1967 album The Last Waltz includes a single entitled "Miss Elaine E. S. Jones."
  • One of the songs on Red Velvet's Power Up EP is called "Mr. E". The song is about an eponymous man who is, as the name suggests, shrouded in much mystery, which draws in the narrator.
  • P!nk's second album is titled Missundaztood.
  • The Pretty Reckless: "Miss Nothing." The entire lyrics are censored in the liner notes after Taylor Momsen was told she could either replace "Miss Cunt-Screwed" with "Miss-Construed", or not print the lyrics at all, and chose the latter. The lyrics feature various puns such as Miss Fortune, Miss Used, Miss Guided...
  • Voltaire: In "When You're Evil", he claims that he goes by different names to different people:

    To the gentlemen, I'm Miss Fortune
    To the ladies, I'm Sir Prize
    But call me by any name
    Any way it's all the same...

Radio 

Tabletop Games 

  • Sentinels of the Multiverse: The villain Miss Information takes on the role of the secretary of the main hero team, and then sabotages them by sending them off on wild goose chases or leaving out crucial information about a particular threat.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Ms. Judge card depicts a female judge (who may or may not be misjudging).

Theatre 

Video Games 

  • Fallout: New Vegas has a perk called "Miss Fortune" which has a chance of summoning an ally of the same name if the player fails to kill an enemy during V.A.T.S.. While her male counterpart the Mysterious Stranger's attacks focus on raw damage, her bullets instead inflict misfortune on the target like randomly crippling a limb, causing them to fall down, or causing the target's ammunition to spontaneously explode!
  • Hydro Thunder has a racing boat called Miss Behave.
  • Just Dance: "Miss Understood", a song introduced on Just Dance 2014. The woman claims she's always had a hard life and people tend to look down on her, but she keeps pushing on.

    Miss Understood
    Even if I'm misunderstood

  • League of Legends: Miss Fortune is the alias of Sarah Fortune, a pirate bounty hunter. She brings misfortune to pirates (who are stereotypically associated with money/fortune).
  • The Marvellous Miss Take: The titular thief is generally more interested in taking things than making mistakes, though she certainly baits the guards into making them
  • Miss Management: The protagonist Denise is a newly hired manager for an office full of zany workers.
  • Neko Atsume: Ms. Fortune is a cat based around the maneki-neko, the "waving cat" figurine common in East Asian stores since it's thought to bring good luck.
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus: The game has a trio of young female bandits appropriately called the Miss Fortune Gang. Their members are each named after items associated with luck: Charm, Clover, and Coin.
  • RuneScape: The White Knights of Falador have Theme Naming playing on the title "Sir": Sir Rebrum, Sir Vey, Sir Renitee, Sir Vyvin, Sir Render, Sir Rogate, Sir Remony, Sir Ving, Sir Fsup, Sir Tiffy Cashien, Sir Loynst Ayke, Sir Plyan Demand... There are few female knights, but there are at least Miss Cheevers and Ms. Hynn Terprett.
  • Toonstruck:
    • Ms. Fortune is a cat with Psychic Powers (a Fortune Teller), who is also evil (meeting her is a misfortune).
    • Ms. Fit, Valley Girl who runs the costume store. She's not a misfit but is instead very fit, since she's noted as buxom and in great shape.
  • Skullgirls: Among the fighters of the original roster is Nadia Fortune, often referred to simply as Ms. Fortune. She's a former thief and a completely fully-aware Pungeon Master.
  • Yo-kai Watch
    • Introduced in Yo-kai Watch 2, Mister E is a recurring character who has a name that's a pun on "mystery". Fittingly, he's one of the most bizarre humans in the game, popping up in all sorts of strange locations and having all sorts of knowledge that he shouldn't have.
    • Yo-kai Watch 3: Miss Teri the 'Merican Yo-kai is said to love mystery novels, and fittingly enough, her name is a pun on "mystery".
  • The World Ends with You: In the Final Remix's "A New Day" extra episode, both Neku and Beat realize something is wrong as they venture through a messed up version of Shibuya and spotting their friends acting weirdly. When they meet Mr. Hanekoma, he notes that "Someone's causing mischief in Shibuya." Beat, the game's resident Dumb Muscle, asks who "Miss Chiff" is. As a Brick Joke, when the two realize that Coco Atarashi, the girl they first met at the start of the episode was the one responsible for what's happening, Beat yells out in realization "She's Miss Chiff?!"

Visual Novels 

Web Animation 

  • The titular Knights of All Realms all have puns on their titles. Sir Lee (surly), Lady Bugg (ladybug) and Sir Loin (sirloin steak).
  • Mondo Media's Miss. Andry, who of course is a misandrist.
  • The Red Eclipse: Miss Conduct's name sounds like "misconduct" — fitting for both her electricity powers and her villainy.

Webcomics 

Web Original 

Web Videos 

  • Charlieissocoollike: At one point, Charlie corrects Mr. Information. She then calls him "Miss Information", and immediately lampshades the pun.

    Charlie: Mr. Information? Ha. More like... Miss Information. (Beat) Get it? See, I am calling him a woman, but at the same time, he gave you misinformation, so it's like a... (to Mr. Information, who he has just punched) What do you think of that.

  • Epic Rap Battles of History: In "Cleopatra vs. Marilyn Monroe", Cleopatra disses Marilyn by claiming she's lost so many babies, she should be called "Miss Carriage".
  • JourneyQuest's main character is Rincewind Expy Sir Perfluous, or "Perf" for short.
  • RTGame: During his time playing Champ'd Up, one of Daniel's moderators drew a character named "Mr. Steak". Daniel started a bit talking about Mr. Steak's life, before realising the pun with the name "Miss Steak" and steered his bit into being about Miss Steak.
  • During TeamFourStar's Pokémon SoulSilver Nuzlocke playthrough, they name their Chikorita "Mr. Stake," tying in with the mon's reputation among competitive fans as the worst of the Johto starters.

Western Animation 

  • Done with a Lampshade Hanging in Animaniacs:

    Dr. Scratchansniff: You're misinterpreting!
    Yakko: [with a beauty pageant model] No, this is Miss Interpreting!
    Wakko: [also with a model] This is Miss Understanding!
    Dot: And I'm Miss Terious.

    • Also, one of the variable verses of the theme song was "Miss Cellany". ("Miscellany" as in "Miscellaneous")
  • The Beetlejuice episode "Back to School Ghoul" has Beetlejuice forced to go back to school to regain his license to drive people crazy. His teacher is Miss Shapen, so named because she looks like a Pablo Picasso portrait.
  • Bojack Horseman:
    • Invoked in "Thoughts and Prayers", where starlet Courtney Portnoy is supposed to appear in a female-led Taken spinoff titled Ms. Taken (Portnoy plays the niece of Liam Neeson's character). The film's release gets put in jeopardy after a nationwide spate of gun violence, and Princess Carolyn suggests emphasizing "Ms" part to save face.

      Princess Carolyn: Men! What if we played up the "Ms." in Ms. Taken? In a world of increasing terror, our movie tells women they don't have to be afraid anymore.

    • In "Ruthie", Princess Carolyn is dancing around the topic of her miscarriage, so of course the very Italian-American Sandro obliviously refers to Kerry Washington, Carey Mulligan, Carrie Underwood, and Mariah Carey all as "Miss [Carry]". (or "Miss Carey, first name Mariah" in the case of the latter).
  • "Miss Understanding," the school newspaper's advice column in the Braceface episode of the same name.
  • Classic Disney Shorts: The Goofy short "Knight for a Day" features a jousting tournament between Sir Loinsteak and Sir Cumference (although the former gets knocked out before the joust, forcing his squire Cedric to take over).
  • C.O.P.S.: Ms. Demeanor's name has a twofer meaning: a misdemeanor can refer to a minor legal offense (she's a crook) or a wrongdoing (she's a villainess).
  • In the Cow and Chicken episode "Cow's a Beauty", all the contestants in the beauty pageant, aside from Cow herself, are labeled as some kind of "Miss" pun.
  • DuckTales: Magica De Spell's French name is Miss Tick.
  • Hazbin Hotel has Sir Pentious, a snake demon, incorporating "serpent" into the pronunciation of his name.
  • Miss Information from Histeria! is supposed to be an informative tour guide, but she's dumb as bricks and often gives out wrong facts.
  • Edgar & Ellen: In "Here Kitty Kitty Kitty", the twins meet a black cat who causes disasters just by walking by. Ellen dubs her "Miss Fortune".
  • The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants: Carrying on from the original books, many teachers have this kind of name, including the Canon Foreigners Ms. Hurd (misheard), Señor Citizen (senior citizen), Ms. Yewh (monsieur), and Mr. Ree (mystery).
  • Dexter's Laboratory: The only female member of the Justice Friends is a magic wielder named Miss Spell.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • In Rabbit Hood, Bugs "knights" the Sheriff of Nottingham with names like Sir Loin of Beef, Earl of Cloves (oil of cloves), Duke of Brittingham, Baron of Munchausen, Essence of Myrrh, Milk of Magnesia, and Quarter of Ten.

      Sheriff: You're too kind, Your Majesty.
      Bugs: (to audience) Got lotsa stamina.

    • In Knight-mare Hare, Bugs finds himself in medieval times and meets a knight with several names, including "Sir Oh of Kay" and "Sir Osis of the Liver". Bugs responds by rattling a list of names based on jazz musicians, including "Duke of Ellington", "Count of Basie", "Earl of Hines", "Cab of Calloway", and "Satchmo of Armstrong".
    • In Knighty Knight Bugs, two of King Arthur's knights are Sir Osis of Liver and Sir Loin of Beef.
  • Ninjago has a minor villainess named "Miss Demeanor."
  • Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures: Sir Cumference's name is a pun on "circumference" and he's a Gadgeteer Genius.
  • The Penguins of Madagascar has an episode called "Miss Understanding", which is about the penguins wrongly believing Skipper to be female.
  • Phineas and Ferb: In "Road Trip," Doofenshmirtz connects to Lawrence via CB radio, using "Misfortune" as his trucker alias. Much to Doofenshmirtz's embarrassment, Lawrence mistakes it for "Miss Fortune," calling Doofenshmirtz "Miss."
  • Rick and Morty: in "Full Meta Jackrick", one of the members of the Self-Referential Six is Miss Lead.
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle: In "Box Top Robbery," Bullwinkle mistakes Boris and Natasha's operation for the print shop he's looking for and knocks on the door, greeting them with "Howdy, Mister Printer! Hello, Miss Print!"
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated has a character who goes by the alias Mister E ("mystery").
  • South Park: "Cherokee Hair Tampons" features a New Age herbal medicine saleswoman named Miss Information, who turns out to be a total fraud.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • A variant; the superheroine Miss Appear has the ability to go invisible, or disappear.
    • During Squidward's song in "Atlantis SquarePantis", a segment featuring Squidward in a surrealist painting contains the lyric "just call me Sir Real".
  • Tiny Toon Adventures:

Real Life 

  • American drag queen Miss Understood (real name Alex Heimberg) puns on misunderstood with her name.