Trip of the Tongue : Rev. Spooner Didn’t Think He Was Being Funny, but He Still Keeps Us in Chuckles

FOR NO DISCERNIBLE reason other than sheer whimsy, John L. Liddle of San Diego has sent me a London-dateline story from The Times’ Calendar section of Sept. 11, 1977, about the inimitable Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1884-1930).

No reason other than whimsy prompts me to recall that otherwise extraordinarily dull man’s one endearing service--his gift to the English language of that slip of the tongue known, in his honor, as a spoonerism .

Thus, Spooner joins the small company whose names, usually because of some personal quirk or invention, have become common nouns. It was John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), who invented the sandwich to avoid having to leave the gaming tables, and hence gave his name to that handy meal.

Boycott comes from Capt. C. C. Boycott (1832-1897), an Irish land agent who was boycotted by his tenants when he refused to lower their rents in 1880.

Wellingtons are the boots named after Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), who bested Napoleon at Waterloo--and wore that type of boot.

Cardigan --a long-sleeved, collarless knitted sweater that buttons down the front--was named after James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan (1797- 1868), a vainglorious martinet who led the foolhardy Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava (in which Errol Flynn was a film hero). A notorious dandy, Cardigan evidently favored that garment.

Raglan , an overcoat or topcoat with sleeves that continue in one piece to the collar, was named after FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan (1788-1855). He was the British commander in chief during the Crimean War who issued the ambiguous order sending Cardigan on his disastrous charge.

And a verb:

Bowdlerize , to damage a literary work by censoring lines that one finds offensive, comes from an English editor, Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who had the effrontery to publish an expurgated Shakespeare.

Spooner’s gift was his habit of transposing the initial or other sounds of words. For instance, it is said that Spooner once referred to Queen Victoria as “the queer old dean,” when he meant to say “the dear old Queen.”

Spooner’s slips were never deliberate, though they brought him a strange sort of fame. He lived in dread of making the next error and remained modest about his accomplishment. Finding his name in a newspaper, he noted, “But of course they thought me most famous for my spoonerisms, so I was not greatly puffed up.”

For 60 years Spooner was a member of New College, Oxford, and served as its warden from 1903 to 1924. He was a small man and colorless (in fact an albino) and had cruelly been called “this shrimp-like creature.” That this remarkably unprepossessing Anglican clergyman should be remembered with such reverence today is owed entirely to his oral lapses.

He was likely to drop them in church and once assured his flock that “the Lord is a shoving leopard.” Also, he once announced that the next hymn would be “Kinkering Kongs Their Titles Take.” It is said that he once told a lady, “Mardon me, padam; this pie is occupued; allow me to sew you to another sheet,” but that sounds too contrived to be authentic.

Perhaps his most famous was a quadruple--a prodigious accomplishment even for the gifted Spooner. While lecturing a delinquent undergraduate, he is said to have told him: “You have tasted a whole worm. You have hissed my mystery lectures. You were fighting a liar in the quadrangle. You will leave by the town drain.”

The complexity of that quadruple suggests that it was invented by one of Spooner’s contemporaries or perhaps even put together from remarks Spooner made to different students at different times. But there is evidence that Spooner himself was capable of such an achievement.

This is one of my favorite spoonerisms, perhaps because it was spoken during World War I, when the dean was getting on in years, and it suggests that age had not diminished his powers. When Brits were fighting across the channel, he told the Home Front: “When the boys come back from France, we’ll have the hags flung out.” Typical of the kind of British spunk that helped them survive the deaths and mutilations of two world wars.

Perhaps Spooner hoped wistfully to be eulogized for a more scholarly skill. “We all know what it is,” he once told his flock, “to have a half-warmed fish within us.”