VERBAL SIDESLIPS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 49, 22 November 1920, Page 6

VERBAL SIDESLIPS

INVENTOR OF SPOONERISMS DEAD. The passing of Mr. Arthur Sidgwick. the famous Oxford scholar, at the ripe old age of 80, will (says the London correspondent of the Auckland "Star") bo mourned as a personal loss by many generations of Oxford, men who sat at his feet, but to tho public generally he in perhaps best known in connection with those verbal slips which are generallv termed "Spoonerisms," aftor Dr.. 'Spoonor, an Oxford don, renowned, for his liability to giving ludicrous twists to words and phrases. There can be no doubt ' that Dr. Spooner possessed a gift for Hie unwitting transposition of words and syllables, but to a very considerable extent he was undoubtedly the victim of the wit nf his Oxford contemporaries, and nf the inventiveness of Arthur Sidgwick in particular. Of the manv examples in "Spoonerism" recalled by his death, the most famous is perhaps "Kinqiiering Cow;- their tatlofc like." Another noted verbal side-slip was "I have brought only two rags and a lm»." Other examples are: "Change for a shoo pv'ling tiece," and ils hurried correction, into "I moan a poo tilling shiece." "Who is there, among us who had never felt a half-warmed fish within his breast?" "I am Eastbourne, they first saw." "Shoving leopard." "I was inlv stooping to boil my icicle." "I must vetiirn to Oxford by the town drain." 'Yon have deliberately tasted two worms." "Ton,s of soil!" (addressing working man)'. "Peter coxed and the crew went, out iind wept bitterly." How manv of three were genuine "Snoopers" and bow many "Sidgwic.ks" one would not venture to say. but the niof"ssor was undoubtedly guilty nf purlin* into currency ft vory large pronorlion of the spurious "Spoonerisms which have added to the worlds gaiety in davs gone by. He was also the author of the famous epigram, "I know nothing of science, t don't even tench it."