[Ads-l] Further Antedating of "Spoonerism"

[Shapiro, Fred]

Spoonerism (OED 1900)

1891 Western Morning News 25 May 5/5 (Newspapers.com)  University Letters. ... Oxford ... The "New Rattler" was even duller than the weather. Its jests were one and all built on the time-honoured model that men call the Spoonerism, and they were not even ingeniously built.

1892 Oxford Magazine 27 Apr. 303/2 (Google Books)  There is that fascinating form of fooling which consists in inverting the terminations or beginnings of words. ... life is hard enough without "Spoonerisms."

Fred Shapiro

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