a mistake in which you accidentally change around the first sounds of two words when saying them, often with a humorous result, for example well-boiled icicle for well-oiled bicycle
ORIGIN Named after W.A. Spooner, (18441930), the head of New College, Oxford, who was said to make many mistakes like this when he spoke.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of spoonerism come from?
This entry for spoonerism is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is spoonerism a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, spoonerism is tagged as noun.
Does spoonerism appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — spoonerism appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
