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May 25, 2013, 4:07am

Any Port in a Storm :: On the Plaza :: Where Words Collide :: Spoonerisms

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Topic: Spoonerisms (Read 340 times)

cheerypeabrain
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Spoonerisms
« Thread Started on Mar 13, 2012, 7:27pm »

Have you heard of the Reverend William Archibald Spooner ? (1844-1930) and Oxford Don associated with this liguistic clumsiness where consonants, vowels or morphemes of words are switched with (sometimes) amusing consequences.

My favourite is the one where he (allegedly) was proposing the toast to the Queen at a college dinner.

"Let us glaze our rasses to the queer old Dean" (...raise our glasses to the dear old queen)

We come across them occasionally...for example I was visiting Belvoir Castle with my sisters and didn't want to use the spiral staircase...I said

'I'm not going down the stairal spycase....'

Are there similar things in other languages?

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Askar
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Re: Spoonerisms
« Reply #1 on Mar 14, 2012, 10:33am »

Yes, in French it's called a contrepéterie. There are at least half a dozen of book and dictionnaries devoted this genre.
A contrepéterie is an intentional (generally) switch of letters or group of letters between two words. However you don't have necessarily to respect the spelling, just the sound is OK. For example a "f" can be replaced by a "ph".

Contrepéteries are often very "graphic".

Example (this one is not too graphic)

Les populations laborieuses du Cap
Les copulations laborieuses du Pape

Cape Town's laborious (hard working) population.
The Pope's laborious (constrained*) copulations.

* I'm not sure if constrained is the correct translation. Someone has to correct me if it's not

« Last Edit: Mar 14, 2012, 10:37am by Askar »

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kerouac2
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Re: Spoonerisms
« Reply #2 on Mar 15, 2012, 6:21pm »

Laborieuse = belaboured

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Askar
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Re: Spoonerisms
« Reply #3 on Mar 16, 2012, 9:24pm »

One more word to add to my vocabulary

Thanks

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patricklondon
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Re: Spoonerisms
« Reply #4 on Mar 22, 2012, 6:19am »

A lot of those attributed to him are probably not his, just inventions of the time, once his reputation began to spread (to an unsatisfactory student: "You have tasted a whole worm - you must leave by the town drain"). The Victorians loved puns and wordplay (cf. Lewis Carroll) - I'm told one of my grandmothers (b.1873) was very fond of "Let us find a nosy cook - I have a half-warmed fish in my heart".

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