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Getting His Words Mixed!

September 17, 2018 by Bob Kelly

His name was William Archibald Spooner and he was born in London in 1844. He became an Anglican priest and a noted scholar, affiliated for 60 years with Oxford University, where he held various leadership posts, and taught philosophy and history. Brilliant though he was, he most likely would have been long since forgotten had it not been for his habitual slips of the tongue, which gave rise to the word “spoonerism.”

Spoonerisms are defined as “the transposition of [usually] the initial sounds of two or more words,” resulting in unintended but often hilarious results. For example, on one occasion, Reverend Spooner reportedly raised a toast to Queen Victoria with these words: “Three cheers for our queer old dean,” and on another occasion, he praised British farmers as “noble tons of soil.”

During a chapel service, he proclaimed that “the Lord is a shoving leopard,” and during a wedding ceremony, advised the groom that “it is now kisstomary to cuss the bride.” He reportedly once accused a less than diligent student of having “tasted two worms” in college, and said to a woman in his church: “Madam, this pie is occupewed. May I sew you to another sheet?”

There remains some question as to how many of these statements Spooner actually made, and he himself despised that dubious recognition, and denied making many of the statements attributed to him. Shortly before his death in 1930, he admitted to only one such slip when, during a worship service, he introduced a hymn as “Kinkering Congs Our Titles Take.”

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