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Concept
Spoonerism
Summary
A spoonerism is an occurrence in speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words in a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and ordained minister William Archibald Spooner, who reputedly did this.
They were already in use by the 16th century by the author François Rabelais and called contrepèteries. In his novel Pantagruel, he wrote "femme folle à la messe et femme molle à la fesse" ("insane woman at mass, woman with flabby buttocks").
An example is saying "The Lord is a shoving leopard" instead of "The Lord is a loving shepherd" or "runny babbit" instead of "bunny rabbit." While spoonerisms are commonly heard as slips of the tongue, they can also be used intentionally as a play on words.
Spoonerisms are named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden from 1903 to 1924 of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this mistake.
The Oxford English Dictionary records the word as early as 1900.
The term spoonerism was well established by 1921. An article in The Times from that year reports that:
The boys of Aldro School, Eastbourne, ... have been set the following task for the holidays: Discover and write down something about: The Old Lady of Threadneedle-street, a Spoonerism, a Busman's Holiday...
An article in the Daily Herald in 1928 reported spoonerisms to be a "legend". In that piece Robert Seton, once a student of Spooner's, admitted that Spooner:
made, to my knowledge, only one "Spoonerism" in his life, in 1879, when he stood in the pulpit and announced the hymn: 'Kinkering Kongs their Titles Take' ["Conquering Kings their Titles Take"]...Later, a friend and myself brought out a book of "spoonerisms"'
In 1937, The Times quoted a detective describing a man as "a bricklabourer's layer" and used "Police Court Spoonerism" as the headline.
A spoonerism is also known as a marrowsky or morowski, purportedly after an 18th-century Polish count who suffered from the same impediment.
Official source
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