Meta-punning:
Literally, a pun about a pun, meta-punning occurs when a pun is attempted, but the purveyor of the pun realizes the pun stretches the boundaries of the material of the pun beyond its capacity to absorb, and so the purveyor then attempts to absolve themselves of the pun’s failure by making a pun about the failure, or more precisely about why the material “stretched out of shape” by the pun could not properly contain the pun’s structure. [Hue’s Defiant Imagination]
Sadly, I have forgotten the example my Arts Editor and I made up.
