A spoonerism is the accidental transposition of the initial sounds of two or more words according to the Oxford English Dictionary. I do this all the time and didn't even know there was a name for it. Then my mother-in-law showed me Runny Babbit by Shel Silverstein. What a riot! This is truly a billy sook as it says on the cover. It is full of poems that have spoonerisms throughout to make for a fun read and some really hilarious mixed-up words. Here is a piece of my favorite poem:
"Runny fad a hamily
Matter of fact, he had
A sother and two bristers,
A dummy and a mad."
I laughed so hard when I read that. I think it was just the picture of a dumb dad and mad mom that it conjured up in my mind. Here are links to a few more poems and pages in the book.
Do Whid It? Runny and Dankee Runny's Jig Bump
Anyone who has been around me enough knows I talk with spoonerisms all the time. In fact when my MIL was reading the book out loud her daughter said "This sounds like the kind of book for Montse." Well, earlier today I did a real doosie. Laura came up to me needing her pants buttoned and I said, unintentionally of course, "Do you need your butts pantsoned?" Let's just say that Joseph, who was in the room, got a real workout for his cheek and stomach muscles. He was laughing that hard.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Spoonerisms
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1 comment:
i've never heard of the term spoonerisms. i have a brother that use to talk like this all the time (he may still be talking this way) and he didn't even know he was getting the letters to his words messed up. now that i see that there's a term for it, i think he's was ahead of his time. ;-)
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