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spoonerism
[ spoo-nuh-riz-uhm ]
noun
- the transposition of initial or other sounds of words, usually by accident, as in a blushing crow for a crushing blow.
spoonerism
/ ˈːəˌɪə /
noun
- the transposition of the initial consonants or consonant clusters of a pair of words, often resulting in an amusing ambiguity of meaning, such as hush my brat for brush my hat
spoonerism
- A reversal of sounds in two words, with humorous effect. Spoonerisms were named after William Spooner, an English clergyman and scholar of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In one spoonerism attributed to him, he meant “May I show you to another seat?” but said, “May I sew you to another sheet?”
51Թ History and Origins
Origin of spoonerism1
51Թ History and Origins
Origin of spoonerism1
Example Sentences
She would sit with me for hours on the couch, pointing to words in books and magazines, and patiently enunciating them, bantering with me in an inexhaustible volley of puns, spoonerisms and goofy double entendres.
Bush, famously, is a gaffe specialist, the purveyor of scrambled-hash syntax, madcap circumlocutions, spoonerisms and other “Bushisms” that have haunted the internet — or as Bush would have it, internets — for decades.
In Week 1463 the Empress asked for Q&A jokes involving spoonerisms — in which the first sounds of two different words are switched.
Still running — deadline Monday night, Nov. 29: Our contest for spoonerism jokes.
This week: Write an original Q-A joke featuring a spoonerism, the transposition of the beginnings of different words, as in the entries above from our 1995 contest.
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