Posted on 06/21/2007 4:32:56 AM PDT by secret garden
In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day".
spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun
The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.
Examples:
We all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish ["half-formed wish"] inside us.
The Lord is a shoving leopard ["loving shepherd"].
It is kisstomary to cuss ["customary to kiss"] the bride.
When the boys come back from France, we'll have the hags flung out ["flags hung out"]!
Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].
Etymology:
Spoonerism comes from the name of the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), a kindly but nervous Anglican clergyman and educationalist. All the above examples were committed by (or attributed to) him.But there is evidence to suggest that the Reverend William Archibald Spooner rarely if ever uttered a Spoonerism.
Spooner spent all his adult life at New College, Oxford, joining it as a scholar in 1862 and retiring as Warden (head of college) in 1924. The term "Spoonerism" began to appear in print around 1900, though the Oxford English Dictionary records that it had been known in Oxford colloquially since about 1885.
The sentence must, in some way, relate to the news of the day. The Review threads are linked for your edification. ;-)
Practice makes perfect.....post on....
Review Threads:
Review Thread One: Word For The Day, Thursday 11/14/02: Raffish (Be SURE to check out posts #92 and #111 on this thread!)
Review Thread Two: Word For The Day, Tuesday 1/14/03: Roister
Review Thread Three: Word For The Day, Tuesday 1/28/03: Obdurate
WFB's attempt to emulate us ; ) No pushing at the door please!
Spooner did transpose items, but not like this - his inversions were more often of whole words or of ideas rather than sounds. A reliable witness records him repeatedly referring to a friend of a Dr Child as "Dr Friend's child". He did things backwards sometimes. One story - well attested - recounts how he spilled some salt during a college dinner and carefully poured some claret on it to mop it up, a reversal of the usual process. He is also said to have remarked on the poor lighting of some stairs and then to have turned off the lights and attempted to lead his party downstairs in the dark.
Wordplay of the type we now call Spoonerisms was rife among Oxford undergraduates from about the middle of the nineteenth century. Spooner was very well known in the small community of Oxford. He was instantly recognisable, since he was an albino, with the pale face, pink eyes, poor eyesight, white hair and small stature that is characteristic of his type. (Some writers have suggested his verbal and physical quirks may have been linked with his albinism, perhaps a form of what is now called dyspraxia.) Spooner later became famous for his verbal and conceptual inversions, so it's easy to see how his name could have become linked to products of undergraduate wordplay. This seems to have been from affection rather than malice, since Spooner (known as the Spoo) was kindly and well-liked.
Spooner was an excellent lecturer, speaker and administrator who did much to transform New College into a modern institution. But he was no great scholar, and it's a cruel twist of fate that he is now only remembered for a concept he largely had foisted upon him
The only Spoonerisms I commit are with my bereal sowl.
I don’t understand the whole British College thing. If one believes contemporary film, a person’s entire worth in Britain is determined by which college at Oxford or Cambridge one attended. Sort of like New England in the US. Outside New England, no one gives a rat’s a$$ where you went to school, it’s who you cheer for in the playoffs and in Nascar.
4
let us find the semocratic dupidity in beleiving that either of theri front runner is good for the country.
hi seekie. did you spill the beans yet?
In the new list of the top 100 movies, “Singin’ in the Rain” is number five. When the bell chimes to start today’s session of The Senate, it will “ring in the insane.”
Mood Gorning to you, too.
Ah, the bill speans, and what might that be?
no more coquette
Palin: And what is your next project?
Idle: “Ring Kichard the Thrid”.
Palin: I’m sorry?
Idle: ‘A shroe! A shroe! My dingkom for a shroe!’
Palin: Ah, Ring Kichard, yes... but surely that’s not an anagram, that’s a spoonerism.
Idle: If you’re going to split hairs, I’m going to piss off.
i thought that was a team from OK, the Spooners?
Sounds serious. Details.
Morning (I think)
My homework:
Don’t go around tonight,
Well, it’s bound to take your life,
There’s a bathroom on the right.
Fince Voster should have gone falking in the worest instead of raking a tide with the Clintons. (Say it out loud for effect).
Watching Billary and Hill campaigning together is like watching one of Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters prancing with the dince. (And I mean that, LOL!)
I swear when I first read that I thought it said dangerous b....
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