SPOONERISM

Homesickness was the most miserable heartache in my younger days. The school hostel with little facilities of entertainment made me think ever so many times of running in to one of the night’s darkness, not to disappear but to see and enjoy the panic stricken faces of the warden and his aids, the kitchen crew, when they found me missing at the mess roll call. Sadism? Yes, at times this art provides an enjoyment, satisfaction or both, to all I feel. But Nanni never let this happen. It was the watchdog of the hostel, ever free to go anywhere any time and never let others enjoy freedom. He was extremely faithful to his master the warden and hence the name, which in Malayalam means faith. His barks switched on his masters mouth to yell “All get in. Don’t repeat” as if he had seen somebody trying to sneak out. Though there were about sixty inmates, I failed to get along with the dramas which some staged having no talent in acting or go for movies with them for mere impatience to hold myself in the cine hall for so long as three hours. Being very friendly with books found them "The House that Jack built!". My father despite his hectic schedules visited me at least twice a month, never forgetting to buy one or two books of my taste. One day he handed me a book about Spooner and his art Spoonerism the type of which was never in my taste list. There are times when the least preferred becomes the most enjoyed. When one has no other choice. I also took the book one day as the most preferred. The start itself startled me and the art there in taught me to get happily engaged in my spare time.
Spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are misplaced. It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency. Spoonerism is commonly heard as slips of the tongue resulting from unintentionally getting one's words in a tangle. Spooner had a nervous tendency to sometimes transpose initial letters or half-syllables in speech. This tendency became the hilarious transpositions known as Spoonerism. Dr. Spooner's occasional transpositions created a reputation and started a fad. Students began devising transpositional puns, and attributing them to him. Despite such occasional presumptions for almost seventy years Spooner was a much loved character in the city of Oxford with an opinion that was highly regarded. He had a successful career as an eloquent and amusing lecturer on divinity, Aristotle's Ethics, philosophy and ancient history and unconsciously won for himself an enviable reputation as a genial, kindly and hospitable man. But Spooner was no featherbrain. In fact his mind was so nimble his tongue couldn't keep up. The Greeks had a word for this type of impediment long before Spooner was born: metathesis. It means the act of switching things around
He seems also to have been something of an absent-minded professor. He once invited a faculty member to tea "to welcome our new archaeology Fellow."
"But, sir," the man replied, "I am our new archaeology Fellow."
"Never mind," Spooner said, "Come all the same."After a Sunday service he turned back to the pulpit and informed his student audience: "In the sermon I have just preached, whenever I said Aristotle, I meant St. Paul."
.He reprimanded one student for "fighting a liar in the quadrangle" and another who "hissed my mystery lecture." To the latter he added in disgust, "You have tasted two worms."
He raised his toast to Her Highness Victoria: "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" During WWI he reassured his students, "When our boys come home from France, we will have the hags flung out."
Spooner died on 29 August 1930. Let us salute the eponymous master of the verbal somersault. He left us all a legacy of laughter. He also gave the dictionary a new entry: spoonerism. The very word brings a smile. It refers to the linguistic flip-flops that turn "a well-oiled bicycle" into "a well-boiled icicle" and other ludicrous ways speakers of English get their mix all talked up.