Spoonerisms in the English language

Question

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!

Answer 1

In English, a spoonerism is primarily a mistake. That is, the original is correct and the spoonerized result is usually nonsense. It seems that the French style is to actively construct 'contrepèteries' and with the intent of creating vulgarities.

To directly answer your questions:

• 'Do such classics exist and what are they?' - They are almost entirely explicit jokes in the joke form What is the difference between X and Y?" One is a ..." and you are expected to supply the dirty spoonerized alternative. For example:

What's the difference between a dirty bus stop and a large-breasted crab?

One's a crusty bus station, and the other is a busty crustacean.

• 'Are spoonerisms common or marginal?' - Not particularly common, whether vulgar or not, whether explicit joke or rhetorical pattern.

• 'Are they also mainly salacious?' - when they are constructed on purpose, yes, they are primarily salacious, but if not they are few and more likely the original is vulgar and then spoonerized into a nonsense phrase to euphemize. e.g Shel Silverstein's

But when he says he pepped in stew

We'll tell him he should wipe his shoe

Answer 2

As a French speaker I was puzzled by the phrases you quoted, not recognising them as Spoonerisms, until I Googled them and found that they are phrases which can be 'Spoonerised' into something rude.

I suppose the classic Spoonerisms are those supposedly made by Dr. Spooner himself; 'You have just tasted two worms' 'The Lord is a shoving leopard' and the like (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism )

There are plenty of non-salacious ones. There is also a style of joke which asks the difference between two kinds of people, of which the answer is a (usually rude) Spoonerism.

Answer 3

I first heard of spoonerisms in a dictionary of literary terms (Woordenboek van literaire termen by Van Gorp et al, in Dutch), where they gave the following example (quoting from memory), attributed to Spooner:

You have hissed my mystery lectures, you have tasted your worm and must take the first town drain.

(I.e. you have missed my history lectures, you have wasted your term and must take the first train down. "Down" meaning out of Oxford.)

One of my favourite spoonerisms is by Dorothy Parker, although this one works better in speech than in writing:

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

In Desperately Seeking Spoonerisms: The Decline of Word Play in Literature (October 2014) Genna Riviecco wrote that spoonerisms "seem to have (...) diminished with marked noticeability in contemporary prose" (i.e. since the 20th century). She quotes the following example from Nabokov's Lolita:

“What’s the katter with misses?” I muttered (word-control gone) into her hair.
“If you must know,” she said, “you do it the wrong way.”
“Show, wight ray.”
“All in good time,” responded the spoonerette.

The above examples are not salacious. (If you are looking for salacious wordplay, get a book of limericks.)