spoonerism
SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm · noun
English
Origin
Formed from the surname Spooner plus the suffix -ism. It honors Reverend W. A. Spooner (1844–1930), an Oxford don said to habitually swap the initial sounds of nearby words.
This is Curio: one word's origin story, every morning. No feed, no backlog.
One short email each morning. Free; stop anytime. See a sample →
Journey
The word simply took the don's tendency and turned it into a permanent label for the slip itself.