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
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.”
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.
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!)