A spoonerism is an occurrence in speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words in a phrase.[1][a] These are named after the Oxford don and ordained minister William Archibald Spooner, who reputedly did this.
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 were already being used as such by the 16th century by the author François Rabelais and called contrepèteries.[2] 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"). [3]
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.[4][5][6] The Oxford English Dictionary records the word as early as 1900.[7] 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...[8]
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"'[9]
In 1937, The Times quoted a detective describing a man as "a bricklabourer's layer" and used "Police Court Spoonerism" as the headline.[10]
A spoonerism is also known as a marrowsky or morowski, purportedly after an 18th-century Polish count who suffered from the same impediment.[11][7]
Most of the quotations attributed to Spooner are apocryphal; The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (3rd edition, 1979) lists only one substantiated spoonerism: "The weight of rages will press hard upon the employer" (instead of "rate of wages"). Spooner himself claimed[4] that "The Kinquering Congs Their Titles Take" (in reference to a hymn)[12] was his sole spoonerism. Most spoonerisms were probably never uttered by William Spooner himself but rather made up by colleagues and students as a pastime.[13] Richard Lederer, calling "Kinkering Kongs their Titles Take" (with an alternative spelling) one of the "few" authenticated Spoonerisms, dates it to 1879, and he gives nine examples "attributed to Spooner, most of them spuriously."[14] They are as follows:
In modern terms, spoonerism generally refers to any changing of sounds in this manner.
He once proclaimed, "Hey, belly jeans"
When he found a stash of jelly beans.
But when he says he pepped in stew
We'll tell him he should wipe his shoe.— Cleary, Brian P. Rainbow Soup: Adventures in Poetry. Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda, 2004.
On the 3 December 1950 episode of The Jack Benny Program, Jack mentions that he ran into his butler Rochester while in his car that was on a grease rack. Mary Livingston was supposed to say "How could you run into him on a grease rack?" but flubbed her line with "How could you run into him on a grass reek?" The audience broke up into so much laughter Jack was unable to reply as the show ran out of time.[31]
Spoonerisms are sometimes used in false etymologies. For example, according to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, some wrongly believe that the English word butterfly derives from 'flutter by'.[32]: p.78
As complements to spoonerism, Douglas Hofstadter used the nonce words kniferism and forkerism to refer to changing, respectively, the vowels or the final consonants of two syllables, giving them a new meaning.[33] Examples of so-called kniferisms include a British television newsreader once referring to the police at a crime scene removing a 'hypodeemic nerdle'; a television announcer once saying that "All the world was thrilled by the marriage of the Duck and Doochess of Windsor";[34] and during a live broadcast in 1931, radio presenter Harry von Zell accidentally mispronouncing US President Herbert Hoover's name as "Hoobert Heever".[34][35]