What are spoonerisms?

Don’t know about spoonerisms? Pobody’s nerfect.

This wordplay technique is a form of linguistic error that can occur when someone is speaking too quickly or not paying attention. However, they can also be used deliberately as a form of wordplay. See how you can inject some levity in your work by making a deliberate mistake through spoonerisms.

The history of spoonerisms

William Archibald Spooner was an English clergyman and educator at the University of Oxford’s New College in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He often lectured about ancient history and Greek philosophy. He was known to make verbal slip-ups while he taught: swapping syllables and consonants in different words. A well-liked faculty member, he became so well known for these gaffes that people at Oxford began naming them after him, as spoonerisms.

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One famous example of a spoonerism attributed to Spooner himself is the aforementioned “it is kisstomary to cuss the bride.” This was supposed to be “It is customary to kiss the bride,”: but here, Reverend Spooner lived up to his name.

Examples of spoonerisms, straight from the source

Spoonerisms became popular as a form of wordplay in the early 20th century, and as Spooner’s reputation grew, colleagues and former students began to collect them. Many of these were apocryphal, but nonetheless became attributed to Spooner:

• While toasting Queen Victoria at a dinner, Spooner reportedly said, “Three cheers for our queer old dean.”
• Spooner, chastising a student, said, “You have hissed all of my mystery lectures, and you have tasted a whole worm.” (“You have missed all of my history lectures, and you have wasted a whole term.”)
• The aforementioned “The Lord is a shoving leopard” was supposed to mean “the Lord is a loving shepherd.”

Spoonerisms are not just limited to single words. They can also occur in phrases and sentences, as seen in the examples above.

Allegedly, Spooner disdained the reputation he earned for these verbal gaffes, and he claimed to have only made one true spoonerism in his life: in 1879, he called a hymn “Kingquering Congs Their Titles Take” instead of its actual name, “Conquering Kings Their Titles Take.”

What is or isn’t a spoonerism?

Errors in language have existed since the very beginning, and they’ve often been used to humorous effect. Some of the three most commonly related linguistic gaffes are:

• Malapropism: This is when you substitute one word for another that sounds similar but means something completely different. The name stems from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in the 1755 play The Rivals, who said such things as “he is the very pineapple of politeness” (instead of “pinnacle”) and, ”she’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile” (instead of “alligator”).
• Eggcorn: Here, a word in a common phrase or analogy is misheard and reinterpreted as a different word — but the resulting phrase still sounds correct. For example, “with baited breath” could conceivably replace the old, meaningfully correct phrase “with bated breath:” it feels accurate because we have forgotten the archaic meaning of “bated.” Linguistics professor Geoffrey Pullum named this gaffe after noticing that someone had said “egg corn” instead of “acorn.”
• Mondegreen: An offshoot of eggcorn, mondegreen specifically refers to misheard song lyrics or poetry stanzas. Coined by author Sylvia Wright in 1954, it stems from a misreading of a 1765 Scottish ballad where she heard the lines “They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray / and layd him on the green” as “and Lady Mondegreen.” She preferred her interpretation better than the original and coined the phrase to distinguish this preference.

While spoonerisms are not as common as they once were, they still appear in popular culture from time to time, used in comedy sketches, children’s books, and even advertising. As a fun and creative way to play with language, they’re just one way to interject some levity in your projects, whether you’re giving a presentation, writing a funny character’s dialogue, or simply trying to nail the tone of your next writing project.