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Spoonerisms, swapping letters and syllables, are often funny, fun, and harmless.

Other speech errors may indicate serious neurological issues.

When the Reverend William Archibald Spooner, the kindly Oxford-educated scholar and priest, called for his congregation to sing the venerable 19th-century Church of England hymn “Conquering Kings Their Titles Take,” it came out “Kinkering Congs.”

He may be unfairly remembered for slips of the tongue like this because he might not even have made this mistake. Or he might have misspoken this way only once. Or, not quite the dithering ancient scholar he portrayed, he may have played along, inventing new, playful “Spoonerisms.” Whatever the case, the mistake became a namesake.

Mistake Becomes Namesake

Spooner’s students (as gifted, mischievous students will) delighted in manufacturing mistakes like his, piling on, contributing to the legend. The students’ inventions, though, are often funnier than the original.

In one sermon, Spooner is alleged to have tried to say, “Our Lord is a Loving Shepherd.” It didn’t take much switching around to make him say, “Our Lord is a Shoving Leopard.” Or when reproving a student for lax attendance and attempting to say, “You have missed all of my history lectures” instead he came out with “You have hissed all of my mystery lectures!”

Here are a couple that I like even more. Allegedly, when performing a wedding ceremony and attempting to intone the traditional “it is customary to kiss the bride,” he inadvertently said, “it is kisstomary to cuss the bride.” And then the one everybody likes best: meaning to refer to “our dear old Queen,” to the assembled congregants, he bumbled on to “our queer old Dean.”

Humorists who swap syllables for a laugh will still be said to commit a “Spoonerism,” wordplay of a specific kind where consonants or vowels or syllables are switched or added. A stale sandwich at a diner? Try “chilled grease” for grilled cheese.

Or the scene in the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera that turns on a pun and a near spoonerism. Groucho, as the slippery character Otis B. Driftwood, parses the legalese in a bogus document he wants Chico to sign.

Groucho begins reading the fine print. “It says…” he squints, “if any of the parties participating in this contract is shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified.”

Chico is skeptical. Groucho,........

© Psychology Today