spoonerism
Sign in to savethumb|An example of spoonerism on a protest placard in London: "Buck Frexit" instead of "Fuck [[Brexit"]] A spoonerism is an occurrence of speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words of a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and priest William Archibald Spooner, who reportedly commonly spoke in this way.
Article
15 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Examples
- Usage
- Comedy
- Literature
- Crosswords
- Music
- Radio
- False etymology
- Scientific research
- Kniferisms and forkerisms
- See also
- Notes
- References
- External links
thumb|An example of spoonerism on a protest placard in London: "Buck Frexit" instead of "Fuck [[Brexit"]] A spoonerism is an occurrence of speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words of a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and priest William Archibald Spooner, who reportedly commonly spoke in this way.
Examples include 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 word play. Since the rise of the Internet and wordfilters, spoonerisms have also become deliberately used as filter-avoidance spellings of filtered terms.