The word snoop - Ursula Dubosarsky 2009

Spoonerisms
Is that a real person?

Party time! Would you like a belly jean? No? What about a chag of bips? What on earth am I talking about? I’m playing a kind of word game called spoonerisms. Over 100 years ago at Oxford University in England, there was a man called the Reverend William Archibald Spooner. He was a gentle, white-haired history teacher, but that’s not what he was famous for—it was the way he spoke that made everyone remember him.

Reverend Spooner had a funny habit of switching around the first letters of words near each other, which made them sound like different words altogether. So instead of saying “toe nails,” for example, he might have said “no tails,” instead of “blow your nose,” he said “know your blose.” These are what we now call spoonerisms, after Reverend Spooner. (Aha! That’s another eponym.)

Imagine if you had been one of Reverend Spooner’s students, and he met you in the corridor. Can you work out what he’s saying on the opposite page?

Student: Good morning, Reverend

Spooner. How are you today?

Reverend Spooner: Wite quell, thank

you. Dot are you wooing?

Student: Er, I’ve been playing football.

Reverend Spooner: Football! But you

have hissed my mystery lecture!

Student: Oops.

Reverend Spooner: This is go nood.

You’ve already tasted two worms playing

football. Go and shake a tower and come

straight to my office.

Student: Ses yer! I mean, yes sir.

Some people, like Reverend Spooner, can’t help talking in spoonerisms, but that’s very rare. Most of the time, writers and comedians make them up, for the fun of playing with words. I wonder if you can work out the spoonerisms on the next page? Better still, make up some really funny ones of your own!

Spoonerisms

1. It’s roaring pain outside.

2. That’s a lack of pies!

3. Would you like a soul of ballad?

4. I don’t have time to chew my doors.

5. Do you live on this hock of blouses?

6. Eye ball!