Spoonerisms! 1

[jdunderhill]

Tony Banks
Hucks Diner
Nosey Cats
Hazelnuts

there we go! me and my uncle think of spoonerisms all the time

 

[strongm]

Er...

 

[jdunderhill]

Er..."

Spoonerisms are great if you can get the jist of how they work!

 

[SF0751]

Spoonerisms are words or phrases in which letters or syllables get swapped, such as a "lack of pies" being said for a "pack of lies". I don't see the above list as being examples of Spoonerisms; can you enlighten us?

Susan
[green]Gramen artificiosum odi. [/green]

 

[strongm]

I know what a spoonerism is and exactly how they work. It's just that I'm afraid that I don't see any of your examples as being typical spoonerisms.

 

[AnotherHiggins]

I'm glad it's not just me!!

I get "Hazelnuts" becoming "Nasal Huts," which is pretty funny - but most of them make no sense to me at all.

 

[jdunderhill]

Tony Banks = Bony Tanks
Hucks Diner = Ducks Hiner
Nosey Cats = Cosy Nats
Hazelnuts = Nasel Huts

Ok not all are technically spoonerisms but bending the rules a little allows for some interesting conversions!

 

[CajunCenturion]

I can stretch for two possibles:

[COLOR=white]Bouncy Pitch -> Pouncy B****
Nosey Cats -> Cosey Nats[/color]

but as for the rest, I just don't see anything reasonable.

Good Luck
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[jdunderhill]

I base spoonerisms on the way you say the words not on how you actually spell them! thats probably the big difference

 

[strongm]

Don't mean to rain on your parade but...mostly not spoonerisms, really. Or not funny (Ducks Hiner, Cosy Nats - what the heck are these?)

 

[CajunCenturion]

Down here in South Louisiana, especially at this time of year, mosquitoes and gnats are really a nuisance, and the last thing you want is for them to get cozy to you. It's a stretch. Correct spelling would be:
cozy gnats


Good Luck
--------------
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[jdunderhill]

lol

I never thought my thread would generate so much interest

I will try to think of some proper spoonerisms for next time

J

 

[johnwm]

'Bewilderment' may be a better description than 'interest'

Maybe a google on the word spoonerism will help. There are a number of clear definitions, and some examples. A clarification of the difference between spoonerism and confused words is here:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/17/messages/266.html

and there are many others from Google.

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[Stella740pl]

johnwm,

From the examples in the link you provided it seems that jdunderhill was not that wrong in his basing "spoonerisms on the way you say the words not on how you actually spell them". In the examples there the sounds are swapped, not the letters. Say, this one:

Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].

This article also notes that "Spoonerisms don't have to make sense. ... It's just that the ones that do make sense, especially if it's a ludicrous sense, get quoted over and over."
It's just the purpose of the game could be to create only those that do make sense.

 

[strongm]

>jdunderhill was not that wrong in his basing "spoonerisms on the way you say the words not on how you actually spell them

No, they wouldn't have been wrong if that is what they had actually done. But, as jdunderhill quickly granted, "not all [of my claimed spoonerisms] are technically spoonerisms".

 

[ESquared]

Once when I was a child (and having just freshly discovered spoonerisms, was happily reciting them left and right) I was riding in the car with my family. Out of the blue, my father sternly said, "Don't say it."

I'm not sure what everyone else in the car thought, but I knew that he was speaking directly to me, and that we had both seen the sign "Food Mart" and he was probably correct that I would have said it. Not the most exciting spoonerism in the world, but an amusing situation, that I had so infected my father that he was doing spoonerisms, too, if only in his head.

Another time when I was a similar age, a friend came to have dinner with us. As I handed him a platter of food, I said, "take a bit," and we both started laughing hysterically. It generated images of placing things in the oven on cookie sheets...

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A sacrifice is harder when no one knows you've made it.

 

[AnotherHiggins]

ESQUARED,
That reminds me of a restaurant chain (I'm now sure how far-flung they are, but we have 2 in my area) called ___________. They *had* to have done that on purpose!

My mother accidentally "spoonerised" the name of the restaurant once during a conversation when I was a kid. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

Note: edited by moderator to avoid offensive content. You're just going to have to guess the restaurant name!

 

[ESquared]

You shouldn't taste your wires by leaving rubber on the pavement!

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A sacrifice is harder when no one knows you've made it.

 

[ChrisHunt]

From

http://www.fun-with-words.com/spoon_history.html

(who got it from the Readers' Digest):

Rear Deeders, how your beds. Let us salute the eponymous master of the verbal somersault, the Rev. William Archibald Spooner. He left us all a legacy of laughter. He also gave the dictionary a new entry: spoonerism. The very word brings a smile. It refers to the linguistic flip-flops that turn "a well-oiled bicycle" into "a well-boiled icicle" and other ludicrous ways speakers of English get their mix all talked up.

English is a fertile soil for spoonerisms, as author and lecturer Richard Lederer points out, because our language has more than three times as many words as any other – 616,500 and growing at 450 a year. Consequently, there's a greater chance that any accidental transposition of letters or syllables will produce rhyming substitutes that still make sense – sort of.

"Spooner," says Lederer, "gave us tinglish errors and English terrors at the same time."

Born in 1844 in London, Spooner became an Anglican priest and a scholar. During a 60-year association with Oxford University, he lectured in history, philosophy, and divinity. From 1876 to 1889, he served as a Dean, and from 1903 to 1924 as Warden, or president.

Spooner was an albino, small, with a pink face, poor eyesight, and a head too large for his body. His reputation was that of a genial, kindly, hospitable man. He seems also to have been something of an absent-minded professor. He once invited a faculty member to tea "to welcome our new archaeology Fellow."
"But, sir," the man replied, "I am our new archaeology Fellow."
"Never mind," Spooner said, "Come all the same."

After a Sunday service he turned back to the pulpit and informed his student audience: "In the sermon I have just preached, whenever I said Aristotle, I meant St. Paul."

But Spooner was no featherbrain. In fact his mind was so nimble his tongue couldn't keep up. The Greeks had a word for this type of impediment long before Spooner was born: metathesis. It means the act of switching things around.

Reverend Spooner's tendency to get words and sounds crossed up could happen at any time, but especially when he was agitated. He reprimanded one student for "fighting a liar in the quadrangle" and another who "hissed my mystery lecture." To the latter he added in disgust, "You have tasted two worms."

Patriotic fervour excited Spooner as well. He raised his toast to Her Highness Victoria: "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" During WWI he reassured his students, "When our boys come home from France, we will have the hags flung out." And he lionised Britain's farmers as "noble tons of soil."

His goofs at chapel were legendary. "Our Lord is a shoving leopard," he once intoned. He quoted 1 Corinthians 13:12 as, "For now we see through a dark, glassly..." Officiating at a wedding, he prompted a hesitant bridegroom, "Son, it is now kisstomary to cuss the bride." And to a stranger seated in the wrong place: "I believe you're occupewing my pie. May I sew you to another sheet?"

Did Spooner really say, "Which of us has not felt in his heart a half-warmed fish?" he certainly could have – he was trying to say half-formed wish.

Lederer offers these other authentic spoonerisms: At a naval review Spooner marvelled at "this vast display of cattle ships and bruisers." To a school official's secretary: "Is the bean dizzy?" Visiting a friend's country cottage: "You have a nosey little crook here."

Two years before his death in 1930 at age 86, Spooner told an interviewer he could recall only one of his trademark fluffs. It was one he made announcing the hymn "Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take," meaning to say "Conquering Kings."

-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk

 

[jdunderhill]

"You have tasted two worms."

This proves by the man himself that my version of spoonerisms are indeed spoonerisms

Litterally it would spell

"You have wasted two torms"

J