deliberate mistakes

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 6/8/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/7/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> >    - feeping creaturism - the one I remembered off the top of my
> > head,  though I don't use it.  "Creeping featurism", "the tendency
> > for anything [computerized that's] complicated to become even more
> > complicated".
> >
> > this is a mock spoonerism, like "swell foop" for "fell swoop" (over
> > 20,000 webhits; this one is so common i'm surprised it hasn't made it
> > into the OED).
>
> Not to mention that "swell foop" may well be older than I am, in
> speech, at least.

In print too:

-----
1922 _Davenport (Iowa) Democrat and Leader_ 5 Feb. 30 "Hairbreadth
Harry" (comic strip) I've busted up that cursed monument and wiped out
my pet aversions at one swell foop!
-----

Margaret Reed's 1932 AmSp article on intentional mispronunciations
(mentioned upthread) doesn't list "swell foop" but has some other
spoonerisms:

in a mell of a hess
sam handwich
sen-tent store
sin twisters
Sloria Gwanson
swy-flatter

And I've previously posted cites back to 1943 for "the whole fam-damily":

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0504A&L=ADS-L&P=R3594


--Zen Bimmer

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