Very Tenables and the surreal world of Spoonerisms.
I should start this piece by stating that spoonerisms have nothing whatsoever to do with spoons.
So nir.
Except of course, that both spoons and spoonerisms are pretty funny. And surreal.
I was reminded of them yesterday when I saw this rather sad news:
I think it was during the 1996 Curled Wup that somebody I knew quite randomly swapped the first letters of Terry Venables’ name around and it stuck fast (don’t spoonerise that!).
I’ve never been able to think of him by his real name again, such is my addiction to silly word play.
The term ‘spoonerism’ originates from the Oxford Don W.A. Spooner (1844-1930), who reportedly said a lot of them. It occurs when sounds are swapped in a word or phrase:
A spoonerism could be a mistake, or deliberate. Many are funny, and it’s no surprise that a lot of them are rude, as anybody who’s heard of Joe Blob will know.
And ‘popcorn’ will never taste the same after it’s spoonerised (that actually isn’t a verb).
Here are some more, phrases that have been spoonerised. Can you work out what they were originally?
