In his book Mother Tongue Bill Bryson discusses the Revd. William Spooner, who gave his name to Spoonerisms. He comments saying 'What is certain is that Spooner suffered from a kind of metaphasis of thought, if not also of word'.
The OED has never heard of metaphasis, and Google/Wikipedia don't recognise it at all.
Is it possible that Bryson is himself guilty of something like a Spoonerism or Malapropism himself?
Wiktionary shows its usage from 1953, probably from the term used in biology as an alternative form of metaphysis.
Metaphasis (uncountable):
The accidental transposition of part of the sounds of two words in a phrase; The production of spoonerisms.
1953, Sir Ernest Barker, Age and Youth: Memories of Three Universities ; And, Father of the Man, page 46: 'Oxford's great metaphasiarch', as Punch once called him, was seldom guilty of metaphasis, or the transposition of sounds. What he transposed was ideas.
1979, Gore Vidal, Kalki, ISBN 0345278739, page 31: Dr. Ashok suffered from a mild form of metaphasis. He made Spoonerisms.
1986 October 23, Adrian Room, “Letters”, London Review of Books: But couldn’t it be that there is a distinction to be made between ‘metaphasis’ and ‘metathesis’? The OED defines the latter as ‘the interchange of position between sounds or letters in a word’ (my italics). An example would be Old English bridd becoming modern bird. This leaves ‘metaphasis’ free to describe what Spooner did: transpose sounds between different words, like his classic ‘our queer Dean’.
2009, Denise Sutherland, Word Searches For Dummies, ISBN 0470453664, page 76: The technical term for this transposition is metaphasis.
Ngram: metaphasis. The term appears in Ngram from the 50s mainly in biological but also literary contexts.
metaphasis n. Transposing sounds or letters in a word or phrase.
It seems that the first recorded instance of this word was nearly 30 years ago.
The accidental transposition of part of the sounds of two words is technically metaphasis, but for more than 100 years it has been hung around the neck of an otherwise obscure classics don. —“In praise of… Dr Spooner,” The Guardian, December 13, 2010
1986 (earliest) SIR: Patrick Hughes is right (LRB, 24 July): ‘metaphasis’ is not in the OED. In fact, as far as I can see, it is not in any dictionary. But couldn’t it be that there is a distinction to be made between ‘metaphasis’ and ‘metathesis’? The OED defines the latter as ‘the interchange of position between sounds or letters in a word’ (my italics). An example would be Old English bridd becoming modern bird. This leaves ‘metaphasis’ free to describe what Spooner did: transpose sounds between different words, like his classic ‘our queer Dean’. —Adrian Room, “Letters,” London Review of Books, October 23, 1986 -
