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A joke in a student comic:

There are two owls playing pool. One accidentally nudges the white.

Owl 1: That's two hits.

Owl 2: Two hits? Two hits to who?

What does this joke mean?

shin
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Feng Yu
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    Isn't this a pun? two hits = tweets? (or am I just imagining it) – shin Jan 25 '16 at 09:05
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    The joke is based on the pronunciation of the question, which is similar to how owls sound, something along the lines of "toohit, toohoo". – Vilmar Jan 25 '16 at 09:08
  • Ah, found it! I only thought of the verb 'hoot', but didn't know the latter part (synonyms) of definition number 2 as provided in the link: https://www.google.com.hk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=hoot%20definition Thanks, @Vilmar. – shin Jan 25 '16 at 09:12
  • Similar joke: I told an owl I was getting married. He replied, "you twit, to who?" – innisfree Jan 25 '16 at 10:31
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    Note to people answering this: how animals' cries are represented is a very language-dependent matter. In English, owls say "To-wit-to-woo". In Chinese they probably say something very different. – Colin Fine Jan 25 '16 at 12:45
  • @ColinFine. Indeed, I remember arguing at school (in Cyprus) that ducks say "Quack". The greeks insisted that ducks say "waa waa" – James Webster Jan 25 '16 at 12:54
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    Huh? I've never heard of "To-wit-to-woo". Is this a British English thing? I've always seen it referred to as just "who" or "hoo" in American English. – Beska Jan 25 '16 at 13:44
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    @ColinFine - It's quite likely that owls themselves make different sounds in England vs. China. There's many different species of owls and they don't all make the same noises. So it's not just language-dependent, it's completely regional. (For example, no owl I've heard in the US sounds anything like that. They mostly just make one hoot, but I suppose it depends on where in the country, as there are so many different species and it's a big country.) – Darrel Hoffman Jan 25 '16 at 16:14
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    In the U.S., the call of the barred owl is described as "Who cooks for you?" – bonh Jan 25 '16 at 17:28
  • @Beska: It may be less common in the US, but it's certainly in some American dictionaries and not marked as being specifically British. For what it's worth, it's also mentioned in Shakespeare (search for "staring owl") :-) – psmears Jan 25 '16 at 18:46
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    For what it's worth, as a native American English speaker, this joke made no sense to me until I read the comments, and even now it only makes a little sense. – Maximillian Laumeister Jan 26 '16 at 02:02
  • Native speaker of America English and also onetime player of pocket billiards under APA (American Pool Association) rules and neither part of this joke makes sense to me. In American pool games (continuous, eight ball, nine ball) touching the white ball inappropriately might be called a "foul" or "scratch" leading to "ball in hand" for the other player. The word "hit" or having "two hits" in pool is new to me and not in the APA rules. This must be a British joke, as confirmed by Rupe's comment on shin's answer. – Todd Wilcox Jan 26 '16 at 02:32
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    @DarrelHoffman your hypothesis makes sense. I know that frogs in particular sound very different. related owl fact - the "twit" and the "twoo" are made by different birds. The "twit" call is made by a female, and the "twoo" is the reply by a male. I always remember it as the woman calling a man a twit, who feigns ignorance with a "who?" – Baldrickk Apr 12 '18 at 12:17

1 Answers1

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Per Vilmar's comment, this is a pun, re: how owls produce the hooting sound:

hoot

verb

1. (of an owl) utter a hoot. "owls hooted, the new moon rose"

synonyms: cry, call, utter a hoot, screech, tu-whit tu-whoo

"in the stillness of the night an owl hooted"

tu-whit tu-whoo

tʊˌwɪt tʊˈwuː/

noun

used to represent the cry of the tawny owl.

shin
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    Specifically, the "tu-whit" is the call of the female and the "tu-whoo" is the reply of the male, so it's technically the cries of a pair of tawny owls. – ClickRick Jan 25 '16 at 11:21
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    +1 to @ClickRick. In the factoid spirit: the name given to this double-touch of the cueball is a "scratch". – TimR Jan 25 '16 at 12:23
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    Sorry but a "scratch" is when the cue ball goes in the pocket (see http://www.wpa-pool.com/web/index.asp?id=123&pagetype=rules). This joke, however, relates to 8-ball pool as played in the UK, where the penalty for a foul is that the fouling player misses a turn, which is usually expressed as the incoming player getting two visits (or hits) in a row. I speak as a former chairman and captain of the London pool team. – Rupe Jan 25 '16 at 16:41
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    @Rupe In American English, any kind of foul might be called a "scratch" but usually any foul that is not the white ball going into the pocket is called a "table scratch" to be clear. Sometimes the penalty for a cue ball in pocket scratch is different from the penalty for a table scratch, hence the distinction. – Todd Wilcox Jan 26 '16 at 02:36
  • @ToddWilcox That's interesting. I guess in practice the idiomatic use of the word is at odds with the World Pool Association's definition of the term (point 8.6 in the link I gave). It's also at odds with what my American pool-playing friends tell me, so I wonder if there are regional differences (there certainly are with pool terms here in the UK). In hindsight, I probably should have stressed the more important second part of my comment, which adds information about how the joke works that hadn't been given previously. I've heard forms of this joke many times over the last 30 years. – Rupe Jan 26 '16 at 09:14
  • @Rupe I guess it could be regional. Funny, in the DC area we have almost every nationality imaginable living in close proximity, and yet all the pool leagues around here are APA and I've never even heard WPA rules mentioned. – Todd Wilcox Jan 26 '16 at 13:13