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spoonerism

noun
/ˈspuː.nəɹˌɪ.zəm/

Etymology

From Spooner + -ism, named after Oxford don Reverend W. A. Spooner (1844–1930), who is supposed to have habitually made such slip-ups.

  1. derived from *(s)peH-✻ — “chip, shaving, log, length of wood”
  2. inherited from *spēnuz✻ — “chip, flake, shaving”
  3. inherited from *spānu✻
  4. inherited from spōn — “sliver, chip of wood, shaving”
  5. inherited from spoon
  6. suffixed as spooner — “spoon + er”
  7. suffixed as spoonerism — “Spooner + ism”

Definitions

  1. A play on words on a phrase in which the initial (usually consonantal) sounds of two or…

    A play on words on a phrase in which the initial (usually consonantal) sounds of two or more of the main words are transposed.

  2. Alternative letter-case form of spoonerism.

    • Dr. Ashok suffered from a mild form of metaphasis. He made Spoonerisms.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for spoonerism. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA