To a dining companion, William Hogarth once sent a card inscribed with a knife, a fork, and these letters:

Η Β Π

It was an invitation to “eta beta pi.”

Exasperated that Nicholas Rowe kept borrowing his snuffbox, Samuel Garth wrote these letters on the lid:

Φ Ρ

“Fie! Rowe!”

Their friend John Dennis observed, “A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.”