As a native-french speaker, I am a big enthusiast of spoonerisms. I used to write a few texts full of them, mainly for my own pleasure!

But I have to be honnest...the underlying meaning was bawdy most of the time (99.8%!). One can perform a few innocent, even poetic ones, but they are less obvious (and not as much expected!). Here it is about french usage of them.

Now, let's come to my point  : I read quite often english litterature (scholar, classical, SF/Fantasy, newspapers, etc.), but I don't see a lot of (obvious!) spoonerisms. In french, you have some very classic ("je te laisse le choix dans la date", "il est arrivé à pieds par la chine") : mostly everyone can recognize them, and once you see them, you know you can expect some more. I guess there are such classics in english, but I don't know them...

Eventually, here are my questions :

• Do such introducing classics exist and what are they?
• Are spoonerisms common or marginals?
• Are they also mainly salacious?

Thanks in advance!

As a native French speaker, I am a big enthusiast of spoonerisms. I used to write a few texts full of them, mainly for my own pleasure!

But I have to be honest...the underlying meaning was bawdy most of the time (99.8%!). One can perform a few innocent, even poetic ones, but they are less obvious (and not as much expected!). Here it is about French usage of them.

Now, let's come to the point: I read quite often English literature (scholarly, classical, SF/Fantasy, newspapers, etc.), but I don't see a lot of (obvious!) spoonerisms. In French, you have some great classics (e.g. "je te laisse le choix dans la date", "il est arrivé à pieds par la chine"); mostly everyone can recognize them, and once you see them, you know you can expect some more. I guess there are such classics in English, but I don't know them...

Eventually, here are my questions :

• Do such introducing classics exist and what are they?
• Are spoonerisms common or marginal?
• Are they also mainly salacious?

Thanks in advance!