Spoonerism Explained

A spoonerism is an occurrence of speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words of a phrase.^[1] These are named after the Oxford don and priest William Archibald Spooner, who reputedly did this.

An example is saying "blushing crow" instead of "crushing blow", 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.

The first known spoonerisms were published by the 16th-century author François Rabelais and termed French: [[wikt: contrepèterie|contrepèteries]].^[2] In his novel Pantagruel, he wrote French: "femme folle à la messe et femme molle à la fesse" ("insane woman at Mass, woman with flabby buttocks").^[3]

Etymology

Spoonerisms are named for the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden from 1903 to 1924 of New College, Oxford, who was allegedly susceptible to this mistake.^{[4] [5] [6]} The Oxford English Dictionary records the word spoonerism as early as 1900.The term 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...^[7]

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".^[8]

In 1937, The Times quoted a detective describing a man as "a bricklabourer's layer" and used "Police Court Spoonerism" as the headline.^[9]

A spoonerism is also known as a marrowsky or morowski, purportedly after an 18th-century Polish count who suffered from the same impediment.^{[10] [11]} was his sole spoonerism. Most spoonerisms were probably never uttered by William Spooner himself but rather invented 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:

• "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" (while giving a toast at a dinner, which Queen Victoria was also attending)^[14]
• "Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride?" (as opposed to "customary to kiss")^[14]
• "The Lord is a shoving leopard." (instead of "a loving shepherd")^[14]
• "A blushing crow." ("crushing blow")^[14]
• "A well-boiled icicle" ("well-oiled bicycle")^[14]
• "You were fighting a liar in the quadrangle." ("lighting a fire")^[14]
• "Is the bean dizzy?" ("Dean busy")^[14]
• "Someone is occupewing my pie. Please sew me to another sheet." ("Someone is occupying my pew. Please show me to another seat.")^[14]
• "You have hissed all my mystery lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. Please leave Oxford on the next town drain." ("You have missed all my history lectures. You have wasted a whole term. Please leave Oxford on the next down train.")^[14]

Popular use/culture

In modern terms, spoonerism generally refers to any changing of sounds in this manner.

Comedy

• The long-running British comedy television show The Two Ronnies regularly featured segments with Ronnie Barker delivering a mock-serious speech littered with spoonerisms, written by Barker.

Writing in tribute for the inaugural Ronnie Barker Talk, Ben Elton wrote:

What an honour. I grew up loving Ronnie Barker and can only hope the news that I am to give a talk in his name doesn’t leave him spitting spiritedly splenetic spoonerisms in comedy heaven.^[15]

• The Washington, D.C. political comedy group Capitol Steps^[16] had a long-standing tradition of performing a routine named "Lirty Dies"^[17] during every performance, which features a typically 10-minute-long barrage of rapid-fire topical spoonerisms. A few examples over the years range from "Resident Pagan" (President Reagan) and the US's periodic practice of "Licking their Peaders" (Picking their leaders) to the NSA "poopin' on Snutin" (Snoopin' on Putin) and "phugging everybody's bones" (bugging everybody's phones).
• Comedian Jane Ace was notorious for her spoonerisms and other similar plays on words during her time as main actress of the radio situation comedy Easy Aces.^[18]

Literature

• Comedian F. Chase Taylor was the main actor of the 1930s radio program Stoopnagle and Budd, in which his character, Colonel Stoopnagle, used spoonerisms. In 1945, he published a book, My Tale Is Twisted, consisting of 44 "spoonerised" versions of well-known children's stories. Subtitled "Wart Pun: Aysop's Feebles" and "Tart Pooh: Tairy and Other Fales," these included such tales as "Beeping Sleauty" for "Sleeping Beauty". The book was republished in 2001 by Stone and Scott Publishers as Stoopnagle's Tale is Twisted.^[19]
• In 2005, HarperCollins published the late humorist Shel Silverstein's Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook, a book about a rabbit whose parents "Dummy and Mad" gave him spoonerized chores, such as having to "Dash the wishes" (for "wash the dishes").
• In his poem "Translation," Brian P. Cleary describes a boy named Alex who speaks in spoonerisms (like "shook a tower" instead of "took a shower"). Humorously, Cleary leaves the poem's final spoonerism to the reader when he says:

• In D.H. Lawrence & Susan his Cow (1939), literary critic William York Tindall described behavioral psychologists as "occupied with nothing more spiritual than pulling habits out of rats".^[20] (This quip is commonly cited to Douglas Bush, who used it in a lecture^[21] two years later.)

Music

• The title of the Van der Graaf Generator's album Pawn Hearts resulted from a spoonerism by David Jackson, who said one time: "I'll go down to the studio and dub on some more porn hearts", meaning to say 'horn parts'.^[22]
• American indie rock musician Ritt Momney's name is a spoonerism of the name of the American politician Mitt Romney.^[23]
• American synthwave musician Com Truise's name is a spoonerism of the name of American actor Tom Cruise.^[24]
• Estonian complextro musician Mord Fustang's name is a spoonerism of the well-known Ford Mustang muscle car.^[25]
• English rapper Loyle Carner's stage name is a spoonerism of his double-barrelled surname Coyle-Larner as well as a reference to his childhood struggle with his ADHD and dyslexia diagnoses.^{[26] [27] [28]}
• American mathcore band The Callous Daoboys is a spoonerism of the Dallas Cowboys.^[29]
• Dutch electronic musician San Holo is a spoonerism of the Star Wars character Han Solo. This led Walt Disney Pictures to send a cease and desist letter for copyright infringement with potential penalty estimated between $5 million and $10 million.^[30]
• American thrash metal band Metallica released a live concert DVD in 1998, titled Cunning Stunts, with it being meant as a spoonerism for “stunning cunts”.^[31]

Radio

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 laughed so much that Jack was unable to reply as the show ran out of time.^[32]

False etymology

Spoonerisms are used sometimes in false etymologies. For example, according to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, some wrongly believe that the English word butterfly derives from 'utter y.^[33]

Kniferisms and forkerisms

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.^[34] 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";^[35] and during a live radio broadcast in 1931, radio presenter Harry von Zell accidentally mispronouncing US President Herbert Hoover's name as "Hoobert Heever".^{[35] [36]}

See also

• Blooper
• Bushism
• Crash blossom
• Freudian slip
• Malapropism
• Metathesis
• Mondegreen
• Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde
• Parody
• Phonemic paraphasia
• Phonetic reversal
• Portmanteau words
• Sananmuunnos
• Smart Feller Fart Smeller

And Other Spoonerisms (book)

External links

• The Straight Dope: Who was Dr. Spooner?

Notes and References

1. Book: Eric Donald Hirsch. Joseph F. Kett. James S. Trefil. The New dictionary of cultural literacy. 20 May 2013. 2002. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 978-0-618-22647-4. 160–.
2. https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/59126/dalrev_vol46_iss4_pp457_465.pdf?sequence=1

   Rabelais gives perhaps the earliest literary example: "II n'y a point d'enchantement. Chascun de vous l'a veu. Je y suis maistre passé. A brum, a brum, je suis prestre Macé." Rabelais, instead of repeating "maître passé" (past master), wrote "prêtre Macé" (priest Mace), the name of the historian René Macé, a monk whose name was synonymous with simple or foolish.

3. Web site: The art of spoonerism . France Alumni . en . The first written proof dates back to the 16th century, with François Rabelais: in his famous novel "Pantagruel", the writer plays with the sound similarity between "femme folle à la messe" (insane woman at mass) and "femme molle à la fesse" (woman with flabby buttocks). At the time, this joke was not only funny; it was a way to upset proper etiquette. Under a supposedly serious sentence, a salacious innuendo is hiding..
4. Names make news. https://web.archive.org/web/20090114084438/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,928998,00.html?iid=chix-sphere. dead. 14 January 2009. Time. 29 October 1928. 20 September 2008.
5. News: 3 November 1980. Spoonerism Message Lost in Translation. Toledo Blade.
6. Compare:News: 1 September 1930. Obituary: Dr WA Spooner. The Manchester Gurdian. Guardian News & Media Limited. 1 September 2010. 23 May 2022. The Guardian archive. In 1879 it was a favourite Oxford anecdote that Spooner from the pulpit gave out the first line of a well-known hymn as 'Kinkering Kongs their titles take.' [...] The anecdote is well enough authenticated, but according to most people who knew Spooner well that was the only "Spoonerism" he ever made – the essence of a "Spoonerism" being, of course, lack of intent, – though later when, thanks to indefatigable undergraduate and alas! graduates and dignified Fellows of colleges, the legends had become legion, he often used deliberately to 'indulge in metathesis,' to live up to his reputation..
7. "Every Schoolboy Knows", The Times, Dec 8, 1921, pg. 7.
8. '"Spoonerisms" a Legend' in Daily Herald 28/9/1928.
9. The Times, 29 October 1937, pg. 9.
10. Chambers Dictionary 1993
11. Book: Bartlett, John. John Bartlett (publisher). Justin Kaplan. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. 1855. 16th. 1992. Little, Brown and Company. 0-316-08277-5. 533. Justin Kaplan.

12. Examples

    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 that "The Kinquering Congs Their Titles Take" (in reference to a hymn)^[11]

13. Web site: Spoonerism. World Wide Words. Quinion. Michael. 28 July 2007. 19 September 2008.
14. Book: Lederer, Richard. Get Thee to a Punnery. Wyrick & Co.. Charleston, South Carolina. 1988. 137–148.
15. Web site: 21 April 2017 . Ben Elton to give inaugural BBC comedy lecture The Ronnie Barker Talk . 1 April 2024 . BBC.
16. Web site: The Capitol Steps – We put the MOCK in Democracy. capsteps.com.
17. Web site: Capitol Steps – Lirty Dies !. capsteps.com.
18. Book: Encyclopedia of Radio 3-Volume Set. Sterling. Christopher H.. Routledge. 1696. 2003. 1-57958-249-4. 1 March 2011.
19. Web site: Stoopnagle's Tale is Twisted, by Ken James. 3 November 2008. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20081006042511/http://stoneandscott.com/stoopnagle.asp. 6 October 2008. dmy-all.
20. Book: Tindall, William. 1939. D.H. Lawrence & Susan his Cow. Columbia University Press. 196. 25 June 2023.
21. Book: Bush, Douglas. 1953. Smithberger. Andrew T.. Essays British and American. Houghton-Mifflin. 465. Life, Letters, and Education. https://archive.org/details/essaysbritishame0000unse/page/465/mode/1up?q=%22habits+out+of+rats%22. 25 June 2023. originally given as a lecture at Smith College (Nov 13 1941) and Wellesley College (Dec 2 1941), Massachusetts.
22. Christopulos, J., and Smart, P.: Van der Graaf Generator – The Book, page 128. Phil and Jim publishers, 2005.
23. Web site: Virtually Famous: Ritt Momney. Evening Standard. 2 October 2020. 26 November 2020. Smyth, David.
24. Web site: Music – Review of Com Truise – Galactic Melt. BBC. 2011-07-05. 2017-07-09.
25. Web site: Mord Fustang – About. 2021-07-05.
26. News: Loyle Carner: Why the South London rapper's album may have you in tears. 18 January 2017. NME. 17 August 2018.
27. Web site: ADHD Isn't My Disorder, It's More Like My Superpower. Bassil. Ryan. 20 May 2016. Noisey. Vice. 2 October 2019.
28. Web site: Loyle Carner: 'I grew up with ADHD, and for me cooking is close to meditation'. Hind. John. 17 November 2018. The Guardian. 2 October 2019.
29. Web site: Interview: Carson Pace of 2022 Mathcore Sensation The Callous Daoboys. 28 February 2023. 19 September 2023.
30. Web site: 2016-03-18 . San Holo is Ready For the Next Episode . 2024-01-14 . Hypebeast.
31. Web site: 2024-08-16 . Metallica: Cunning Stunts(1998)- DIRECTED BY: Wayne Isham . 2024-08-16 . Letterboxd.
32. Web site: Jack Benny's "Grass Reek" Punch Line Discovered After 65 Years. cleanslatefilms.com. 19 March 2015. 15 June 2021.
33. [Ghil'ad Zuckermann|Zuckermann, Ghil'ad]
34. Book: Hofstadter. Douglas. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Human Thought. limited. 1995. Basic. NY. 117.
35. Phonemic and Analogic Lapses in Radio and Television Speech. American Speech. 31. 4. 252–263. Duke University Press. December 1956. 453412. 10.2307/453412. Simonini. R. C..
36. Web site: snopes.com: Harry von Zell and Hoobert Heever. 2 February 2009.