SPOONERISMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 124, 27 May 1937, Page 16

SPOONERISMS

A NEW CONTRIBUTION

. .Doubtless the! time will come when some, candidate, for;the Ph.D. degree will offer a thesis on Spoonerism, says the "Manchester Guardian." Certainly "dissertations have been written before how on subjects of less literary, or linguistic importance. ■~.'' Aj lively contribution to the, study of Dr. Spooher's verbal transpositions'^ made in a number/of the ."Periodical,"', a quarterly issued by the Oxford University Press. The article adds several new stories to the old repertory. A New College man vouches for the fact that Dr. Spooner,;.when his guest at dinner, remarked at dessert that he had lately tasted a most delicious madeira when he was iri banana. The same authority reports Dr.: Spooher . as.. saying , to..a friend>of his, who met him", travelling abroad, "Please remember. G. to me when you w/ite.''- Dr.Spooheivis further alleged', to have baptised .Wins as Steak and Kidnfey (Kate and Sidney), to have described the Prodigal Son as on the busy drink of, destruction, and to -' have given- an assurance that the insanitary spectre' had seen certain rooms. A. D. Godley, though he never heard Spopner make a Spoonerism, once heard, him say, at the. -conclusion of a lecture, ".Gentlemen, in the lecture I have just, delivered, I wish you to note that whenever I said Herodotus I meant ThUcydides." The Warden's characteristic: eccentricity seems even to-have extended,from speech to writing, for he once posted at the New College lodge the notice: "Will all undergraduates who matriculated before 1819"—that is, 1918—"please see the Dean?"