spoonerism

plural spoonerisms · alternative Spoonerism

1. rhetorichuman sciencesA play on words on a phrase in which the initial (usually consonantal) sounds of two or more of the main words are transposed.

   1 more example

   Undergraduates at Oxford University were playfully fond of Spooner, whom they nicknamed "the Spoo". They also coined the term "spoonerism" around 1885, after Spooner had been a fellow at New College for almost twenty years. By 1892, his reputation for absentmindedness was well known; students came to New College expecting to hear a spoonerism.

   2007, Michael Erard, Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, page 16

   Synonyms: marrowsky

plural Spoonerisms

1. Alternative letter-case form of spoonerism.

   Dr. Ashok suffered from a mild form of metaphasis. He made Spoonerisms.

   1978, Gore Vidal, Kalki, New York, N.Y.: Random House, →ISBN, page 30

   4 more examples

   A Spoonerism may sometimes alter the whole tenor of a person’s career. An extremely bashful man was asked to find the elderly daughter of the house, who was in the garden, and ask her to make tea. “Miss Florence,” he said, when he discovered her in the rosery, “I have come to ask if you will take me?” And she did!

   1919, Jessie Pope, “Spoonerisms”, in Pearson’s Magazine, volume XLVIII, page 535, column 1

   I am not going to put on any weight until I’m fifty, when I shall allow myself to become matronly, ready to be a follower of ‘soda and gobbly matrons’, as enjoined by the marriage service. (A good Spoonerism that, created quite involuntarily by my mother some years ago.)

   1976 July, Oxford Diocesan Magazine, page 15, column 1; quoted in “spoonerism”, in R[obert] W[illiam] Burchfield, editor, A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, volumes IV (Se–Z), Oxford, Oxon: At the Clarendon Press, 1986, page 434, column 3

   I tried to concentrate on this very tiny but very fascinating scandal-ette involving a leggy blonde Russian researcher, but Jude Law – and Spoonerisms – kept distracting me […] Now Nick Herbert had just been asked about cuts to front line policing. ‘I don’t accept that those are c****,’ he said, immediately correcting himself.

   2011, Ann Treneman, “MI5 was watching Katia? So were many male MPs”, in Dave and Nick: The Year of the Honeymoon…and Beyond, London: The Robson Press, Biteback Publishing Ltd, →ISBN

   An attached cavalry officer was called Captain Lunt. McCord employed his best Spoonerism to rename him ‘Laptain’.

   2013, Chip Chapman, “Nicknames”, in Notes from a Small Military, London: John Blake, →ISBN, page 119