737: spoonerisms Dec 14, 2016

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Yesterday, the focus of Word Facts was misinterpretations of things people hear, and if you didn't see it, click here. The opposite side of this problem is, logically, misspeaking. There are a number of ways that this happens, including saying an unintended word, or leaving information out, but an often funnier mistake that some people make might be to switch the sounds of words around, such as 'sons of toil' instead of 'tons of soil', or 'pobody's nerfect' for 'nobody's perfect'. The term for this phenomenon is 'spoonerism', named after William A. Spooner, a clergyman known for constantly making this mistake.

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