Spoonerisms.
As I went out for one last smoke before going to bed, I came to think about Spoonerisms.
The associations took their course through an expression me and my ex made up, "don't throw rocks in a hoodie", referring to the expression "don't throw rocks in a glass house" and the pun/Spoonerism "don't throw glass in a stone house".
A small note must be made; As I did a quick google search to see if this expression is also an English one (i.e. not a Swedish expression, incomprehensible to English readers) it turns out that "Throw rocks at boys" gets 13 400 000 results, and "throw rocks in a glass house" gets 2 670 000 results. Got to love that auto-fill!)
Spoonerisms are fun to a lot of people. I find it most amusing when a Spoonerism finds its way into everyday language, thus making people forget the "real" word. Butterfly is one of these.
Me and above-mentioned ex once had a fairly long discussion about the origin of the word butterfly, as it didn't make sense to us. Sure, we could understand the yellow ones and their resemblance to butter, but they come in so many colors. Several months later, we visited some relatives of mine. They happened to have a copy of the Oxford dictionary of word origins, (which could be this book, but I'm not sure as the one we looked at had a more... serious appearance)and in it we found that the creature used to be called flutterby. This makes more sense, because, well, that's what it does for a hobby. I really makes me smile that I know something about the English language, that most people with English as mother tongue doesn't.
In Swedish, some people, mostly middle-aged men, jokingly refers to phones with a spoonerism. The word is telefon, and they make it into feleton. That, I'm glad so say, has not become a common expression.
What other common spoonerisms do you know? Comment and let me know.
The associations took their course through an expression me and my ex made up, "don't throw rocks in a hoodie", referring to the expression "don't throw rocks in a glass house" and the pun/Spoonerism "don't throw glass in a stone house".
A small note must be made; As I did a quick google search to see if this expression is also an English one (i.e. not a Swedish expression, incomprehensible to English readers) it turns out that "Throw rocks at boys" gets 13 400 000 results, and "throw rocks in a glass house" gets 2 670 000 results. Got to love that auto-fill!)
Spoonerisms are fun to a lot of people. I find it most amusing when a Spoonerism finds its way into everyday language, thus making people forget the "real" word. Butterfly is one of these.
Me and above-mentioned ex once had a fairly long discussion about the origin of the word butterfly, as it didn't make sense to us. Sure, we could understand the yellow ones and their resemblance to butter, but they come in so many colors. Several months later, we visited some relatives of mine. They happened to have a copy of the Oxford dictionary of word origins, (which could be this book, but I'm not sure as the one we looked at had a more... serious appearance)and in it we found that the creature used to be called flutterby. This makes more sense, because, well, that's what it does for a hobby. I really makes me smile that I know something about the English language, that most people with English as mother tongue doesn't.
In Swedish, some people, mostly middle-aged men, jokingly refers to phones with a spoonerism. The word is telefon, and they make it into feleton. That, I'm glad so say, has not become a common expression.
What other common spoonerisms do you know? Comment and let me know.
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