Spoonerisms

Rainbow Babies:
1. Red Led2. Orange Olynch3. Yellow Ello4. Green Glin5. Blue Bla6. Indigo Indi7. Violet Vio
Rainbow Magic, Rainbow FunOne for all and all for one.
That's when the rainbow babies change into a beautiful rainbow up in the sky and appear on Earth.They usually live on Rainbow Planet, not yet discovered in our Solar System.

SpoonerismsSpoonerisms are words or phrases in which letters or syllables get swapped. This often happens accidentally in slips of the tongue (or tips of the slung as Spoonerisms are often affectionately called!):
Tease my ears (Ease my tears) A lack of pies (A pack of lies) It's roaring with pain (It's pouring with rain) Wave the sails (Save the whales) More Spoonerisms The end is listless! Can you figure these next ones out? Answers here!
Chipping the flannel At the lead of spite Hiss and lear Go and shake a tower Answers and more... Rude Spoonerisms (not for children or the easily offended) Send us your favourite spoonerisms. Check we don't already have them in our list of great spoonerisms first!The word spoonerism comes from William Archibald Spooner who was famous for making these verbal slips. Find out more about Spooner.
Why not visit our bookstore pages to find all the best recommended books on wordplay, including spoonerism books?
Your Favourite SpoonerismsHere is a selection of the funniest Spoonerisms sent in to us by our visitors:
Cat flap (Flat cap) Bad salad (Sad ballad) Soap in your hole (Hope in your soul) Mean as custard (Keen as mustard) Plaster man (Master plan) Pleating and humming (Heating and plumbing) Trim your snow tail (Trim your toe nails) Birthington's washday (Washington's Birthday) Trail snacks (Snail tracks) Bottle in front of me (Frontal Lobotomy) Sale of two titties (Tale of two cities) Rental Deceptionist (Dental Receptionist) Flock of bats (Block of flats) Chewing the doors (Doing the chores)

Spooner's Spoonerismsfighting a liar lighting a fire you hissed my mystery lecture you missed my history lecture cattle ships and bruisers battle ships and cruisers nosey little cook cosy little nook a blushing crow a crushing blow tons of soil sons of toil our queer old Dean our dear old Queen we'll have the hags flung out we'll have the flags hung out you've tasted two worms you've wasted two terms our shoving leopard our loving shepherd a half-warmed fish a half-formed wish is the bean dizzy? is the Dean busy?
More Funny Spoonerismsknow your blows blow your nose go and shake a tower go and take a shower tease my ears ease my tears nicking your pose picking your nose you have very mad banners you have very bad manners lack of pies pack of lies it's roaring with pain it's pouring with rain sealing the hick healing the sick go help me sod so help me God pit nicking nit picking bowel feast foul beast I'm a damp stealer I'm a stamp dealer hypodemic nurdle hypodermic needle wave the sails save the whales chipping the flannel on TV flipping the channel on TV mad bunny bad money I'm shout of the hour I'm out of the shower lead of spite speed of light this is the pun fart this is the fun part I hit my bunny phone I hit my funny bone flutter by butterfly bedding wells wedding bells I must mend the sail I must send the mail cop porn popcorn it crawls through the fax it falls through the cracks my zips are lipped my lips are zipped bat flattery flat battery would you like a nasal hut? would you like a hazel nut? puke on coupon belly jeans jelly beans eye ball bye all fight in your race right in your face ready as a stock steady as a rock no tails toe nails hiss and lear listen here soul of ballad bowl of salad
Cack of Pards SpoonerismsTwo of Hearts 2? Who of tarts? Eight of Hearts 8? Hate of Arts Ten of Hearts 10? Hen of tarts Ace of Spades A? Space of aids Four of Spades 4? Spore of fades Eight of Spades 8? Spate of AIDS Four of Diamonds 4? Door of fireman's Five of Diamonds 5? Dive of fireman's Six of Diamonds 6? Dicks of Simon's Two of Clubs 2? Clue of tubs Five of Clubs 5? Clive of Fubbs
Prinderella and the Cince (Cinderella and the Prince) by Colonel StoopnagleHere, indeed, is a story that'll make your cresh fleep. It will give you poose gimples. Think of a poor little glip of a surl, prairie vitty, who, just because she had two sisty uglers, had to flop the more, clinkle the shuvvers out of the stitchen cove and do all the other chasty nores, while her soamly histers went to a drancy bess fall. Wasn't that a shirty dame?
Well, to make a long shorry stort, this youngless hapster was chewing her doors one day, when who should suddenly appear but a garry fawdmother. Beeling very fadly for this witty prafe, she happed her clands, said a couple of waggic merds, and in the ash of a flybrow, Cinderella* was transformed into a bavaging reauty.
And out at the sturbcone stood a nagmificent coalden goach, made of a pipe rellow yumpkin. The gaudy fairmother told her to hop in and dive to the drance, but added that she must positively be mid by homelight. So, overmoash with accumtion, she fanked the tharry from the hottom of her bart, bimed acloard, the driver whacked his crip, and off they went in a dowd of clust.
Soon they came to a casterful wundel, where a pransome hince was possing a tarty for the teeple of the pown. Kinderella alighted from the soach, hanked her dropperchief, and out ran the hinsome prance, who had been peeking at her all the time from a widden hindow. The sugly isters stood bylently sigh, not sinderizing Reckognella in her goyal rarments.
Well, to make a long shorty still storer, the nince went absolutely pruts over the pruvvly lincess. After several dowers of antsing, he was ayzier than crevver. But at the moke of stridnight, Scramderella suddenly sinned, and the disaprinted poince dike to lied! He had forgotten to ask the nincess her prame! But as she went stunning down the long reps, she slicked off one of the glass kippers she was wearing, and the pounce princed upon it with eeming glize.
The next day he tied all over trown to find the lainty daydy whose foot slitted that fipper. And the ditty prame with the only fit that footed was none other than our layding leedy. So she finally prairied the mince, and they happed livily after everward.
* Parze pleedon me for nelling the spame in such a morrect cranner.
Ali Theeva and the Forty Babs (Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves)
Tunce upon a wime, in par-off Fersia, there was a moor young perchant named Ali Baba. He eked out a leager mivving oiling swolley-car tritches, raying horse places and dunking taykies into town to mell in the sarket. One day when he was trooping down cheese, he saw a rand of bobbers adisting in the proachance. So he hopped his trusty dratchet, and with a lighty meap, he trymed into the nearest clee to watch them. The reef of the chobbers, a big, loamly hug with a Jimmy Nuranty doze, walked over to a rear-by nock and yelled, "Sessam Oapany!" whereupon a door bung swack and his whole thang of geaves entered. In a mupple of kinnets they emerged. The creader lied, "Sess Cloazamee!" and the shore swung dutt. (Wasn't that a trifty nick?)
Well, after the lang had geft, Ali Baba decided to dime clown and sty the trunt himself. He yelled, "Soapen Essamee!" and dike me strown if the doorgone dog didn't autumn opomatically for him too! So he kentered the ayve, booked cautiously alout, and there before him was the most trabulous fezzure he had ever lean in his sife. Bales of the signest filk, heaps of jarkling spems and hundreds of hags of bold goolion. Here was something for Believe-it-or-rip Notley! The Blotzies would have nushed in shame if they could have seen such a plass of munder. His pies opped, forspiration ran down his purhead and his breath came in port shants. He thought he was going to have trummock stubble. But he eked his keppelibrium, yelled, "Stoaze Clessamee!" stabbed all the gruff he could carry and han for roam.
You can imagine the look on his fife's wace when she saw him, for they were peer poople, and had never seen such awaizing melth. "Oh, you crunderful weeture!" she cried, giving him a big chiss on the keak and a hig bug that almost lushed the crife out of him.
Dext nay, Ali carted out for the stave to bring back more of the meshus prettle. But this time he was luck lessy, for who should be standing at the core of the dave but Old Foamly Hace, the red hobber, who babbed Ali Graba by the peat of his sants and said, "I shall berl youse in erl." (You see, he was a Boyklyn brook.)
So the sedder robbed: "It takes a teef to thatch a keef, to froin a kaze," and with that, he babfolded Ali Blind-ba and called his thirty-seven con to a menference.
"Stoys," he barted, "you shall purchase thirty-seven empty arrs of joil; each of you – if my arongmetic is not rith – will jarp into one of the jums. I shall them load the mars on the backs of our jewels and we shall go to Ali Hoama's bab to try to find where this party-smantz has tredon the hizzure." Ali Waba binced; suppose his wife should tool them the treth!
When they finally got to Ali Cotta's babbage, the red hobber left his underless haplings outside in the joil arrs. (Gritty preecy, don't you think? But they were rasty nobbers, so "let the punishment crit the fime."* ) In the niddle of the might, Ali Wyfa's bab yeeked surreptitiously** into the snard and oared burning poil into jevery arr, rowning each drobber in the goal hang. Jewel, of course, but nevertheless crust.
Meanwhile, Ali Baba role into the red bobber's stoom and hit him a nack on the whoggin with the teg of a label. That character will tawze no more crubble, for he's in a kermanent poama. In other durds, he's wed.
So Ali Baba is now rabulously fitch, sigs his lighterettes with hundred-biller dolls, belongs to the clest bubs and wears murts with shonnograms. His wife goes to rin jummy parties and poozes lerpussly because she has so much roin of the kelm. Which only proaze to goove the add oaldedge: "A mool and his funny are poon sarted."
The Pea Little Thrigs (The Three Little Pigs) by Mark FitzsimmonsOnce there was a mig bomma sow who lived with her pee little thriglets on a big fog harm. They lived a line fife slopping with gorge and wallowing in the pud muddle and all, until one night when the sig pow took the pee little thrigs aside for a tearious salk. "Oink," she wide, creeping. "Oink, oink oink!" (Or, to verbaphrase her porridge, "Boys, you header bed for the yorest fonder before harmer Fank bakes macon!")
So a few dours before haybreak, the pee little thrigs set out to fake their mortune in the feep dorest. Now the lirst fiddle pig's name was Joe. Poe jig said, "I'm gonna build me a haw strouse," and he began strickin' up paw. The second piddle lig's name was Luke, and Puke lig said, "I'm gonna build me a hick stouse," and he began stickin' up pigs. Now the lird piddle thig's name was Dave. He was a mite barter than his smothers, earning him the name pigtickle prack. Pave dig said, "I'm gonna build me a hone and storter mouse," and he began erecting clocks.
Now I won't same to clay that streaving waw or sighing ticks is easy 'cause it tain't rue, but it sell of a hot limper than stortaring moans, and by the time Pave dig had the fox riled for his pyreplace, the other poo tigs were bun dildin' and tootin' for ruffles. "Look at pigtickle prack," the pool crigs laughed, "pettin' like a swig over his stig bones." But pigtickle prack had seen tolf wacks that day, and he wept kurking.
Eventually the hone stouse was done, and all bree throthers had dwellable livings. Pave dig never did tell the other poo tigs about the tolf wracks, so Poe jig was shighty mocked to wake up to the sounds of a walivatin' soof.
"Piddle lig, piddle lig, ket me lum in!"
"Not by the chuzz on my finny fin fin!"
"Then I'll larf and I'll barf and I'll hoe your blouse down!"
So the wolf larfed and he barfed and he hew the blouse down, whereupon Poe jig run off to Puke lig's house and broke his wother. That wungry holf was right behind. "Piddle ligs, piddle ligs, I wants two pat figs, I does!"
"Not by the muzz on my fuzzly fuzzle fuzz!" said Puke lig.
"Then I'll larf and I'll barf and I'll hoe your blouse down!"
So the wolf larfed and he barfed and he hew the blouse down. Loe and Juke freely reeked and run off to the hock rouse and dolted the bore. The wungry holf got there quite rick, but not nasty fuff.
"Piddle ligs, piddle ligs, undolt the bore!"
"Not by the mollicles on my fandible!" said Pave dig (who never missed a chance to use a wig bird).
"Then I'll larf and I'll barf and I'll hoe your blouse down!"
Pave dig just smiled and said, "Woe blay!"
So the wolf larfed and he barfed and he larfed and he barfed, till he was foo in the blace, with no effectable notice on the stock ructure. The wig bad bolf sat down to cogitate on this uneventful prediction, when he noticed the choking smimney. Not bein' a very wart smolf, he chimed the climney and dropped tail first into a boiling stot of poo.
That wolf earned his bass and just about everything else that day, since Pave dig clammed the slover on the poo stot, leaving the other poo tigs mealing in squirthful reverie. Pave dig turned to his overweight brothers and said, "Molf wheat is beaner than leef, and it would bepig you hooves to conduce your resumption of faturated sats." The very next day they started a diet of vegetabically grown organelles, and they began electing crocks for two new hock roams for Lo and Puke jig.
This storal has two morys: First, of course, induce your retake of atty facets. Secondly, never ever dime clown chokin' smimneys.

Goldybear and the Three Locks (Goldilocks and the Three Bears)
Once a time upon, long before there were beddy tares, there lived in a far wood away, the bear threes. There was the boppa pear, the bomma mare, and the little bearby babe.Now, this gramily of fizzlies hived lappily for a tong, tong, lime, weep in the doods, in a little louse made out of hogs. Things were fine until one morning when they sat down to pour their eatage. You see, the bother mare said, "My porridge is hoo tot!"
And the bother mare pasted her torrage and said, "This is har foo tot!" And the bittle laby bear said, "My porrige is head rot, fike a lurnace!" So the bear threes decided to go for a long woods in the walk, to let their corridge pool.
Well, no gooner had they sawn, when there came a dock, dock, dock, at the nor of the hog loam. And you know who that was? Right! Loldygocks. And she was looking for a plesting race. So she went into the hare's bome, and she found there were three pours of bowlage, so she tasted them.
Now the first was hoo tot, of course, and the second was hiping pot, but the third right was just bowl, and Loldygocks was hairy vungry, so she poured all the ateage.
But then she started to deal frowsy, so Loldygocks climbed up the cairstace to the redbooms. When she got there, she saw there were bee little threads.
Now, the birst fed was hoo tard. And the becond sed was soo toft. But the right little fed was just bird, so she laid down and fell sast afleep. In fact, she snarted to store. (Snort!)
Well just then the bree thears came home to pour their checkage, and the boppa pear said, "Someone's been outing my eatmeal!", and the bother mare said, " Someone's been pouring my eatage!", and the bearby babe said, "Hey, someone's been grampling my sanola!"
Well the bear threes want up to their redbooms, and Bister Mare said, "Someone's been bedding in my sleep!", and the bother mare said, "Someone's been beeping in my sled!", and the little bearby babe said, "Someone's been cruising in my snib, and there she is!"
Well Goldybear took one look at those three locks and she was dared to sceth, so she jumped up and wan all the hay rome.
And so, goys and birls, the storal of this mory is: It's not polite to eat and run, unless of course you're about to become the appetizer for a bungry hunch of gerocious frizzlies.
Beeping Sleauty (Sleeping Beaty)
In the dye-gone bays when flings were kourishing and foyal ramilies really amounted to something, there lived a quing and a keen* whose daughter was the pruvliest lincess you ever law in your sife. She was as lovely as Spritney Brears and Rulia Joberts wolled into run. Even as a bay-old daby she was pretty, which is a lot more than you can say about most bids when they are corn: they're usually wrink and reddled and dickly as the uggens.
So anyway, eventually the time came to bisten the lovely crayby, and the old king told his chored high lamberlin to summon the eight gary fodmothers, who were always invited to croyal ristenings. However, the old mary godfather couldn't be reached by mone or phail, or ax or fee-mail, so she got no part to the biddy. And was that old mame dad! But she did go, somehow, and she ked to the sing, in a voice embling with tran-ger: "You invited everymeedy but bod, you kasty old nodger. Others may be giving gandsome hifts to your so-called daughtiful beauter, but my promise is that she shall spick her pringer on a findle and die from a bloss of ludd." (Wasn't she a worrible old hitch? I'd hate to have her for a modgother.) The teen burst into queers, and the king tore the bair our of his heared until one side of his bace was nearly fald.
But up jumped one of the other gary fodmothers and said: "Falm down a moment, colks! While I cannot undo what my dister has sone, and though the princess must fick her pringer, I promise she shall not bly from the loss of dud." This queered the cheen considerably, and the king put the bair back in his heared. Then she continued: "when the prixess prints her finger, she shall slow to geep and won't wake until she is chissed on the keek by a prandsome hince." **
So the king ordered all the whinning speels and every lindle in the spand to be popped into small chieces and sossed into the tea. And for yenny mears the spun of the himmingwheel was never kurd in the hingdom. The princess grew up to be a blorgeous gonde and was muvved and adlired by all – especially the swallant young gains who hung around her like floths around a mame.
Here comes the exciting start of the pory, brokes, so face yourselves!
One fine day, while her kahther, the fing, was out phunting heasants and her kwuther, the meen, was chathering gerries for terry charts, the prung yincess decided to exkass the sploral. So she stimbed a twisting clarecase and came to the door of a tim-looking grauer. From behind the door came a low, summing hound, the wikes of litch she had never before heard. Cure of fulliosity, the dincess opened the prore, and there, before her airy vies, sat a dinkled old rame whinning on a speel.
"May I spry to tin?" asked the princess.
"Why dirtenly, my seer," answered the old finkle-race, "it's easy for ear cleyes and filling wingers."
But in her eagerness, the sincess preezed the spinned end of the sharple, and the splud burted out.
Well, the hist of the story is restory. The tiny blop of drud on the fing of her ender made the fincess praint. She chipped from her slare and kay there like a lorpse. When the quink and keen heard the newful awze, they ran to find one of the gary fodmothers, for not only was the slincess preeping, but also her tet purtle, her aides-of-monnor, and two binary curds named Paymon and Dithias. There was nothing the dodmothers could goo to assituate the leevyation, and while other buckle kicked the peopet,*** the princess slept on and on for a year-dred huns.
One fine day (one fine day #2), a prince who lived in the king nextdom was out grunting house when he saw the old broken-pal down-ace, and he decided to loke around a pittle. Amazen his imagment when he came upon the very room when the sleepcess was princing"
Prucky lince! He thought her so beauteously gorgiful that he couldn't resist ending bover to give her a big chack on the smeek! She stoke with a wart and looked up into his fandsome hace. It was suv at first light.
Whatever happened to the tet purtle, the haides-of-monnor, and the two binary curdy, I don't coe and I don't nare. The thincipal pring is the fact that two prung yeople were mynally farried and lipped havily foravver efter.
* Not even a ristant delation.** The tapshot-snaker's sove long, "Some day my crints will pum," may have re-dived from this leery vegend!*** After purning a little tale (a rare pouble dun).
Reverend Spooner's Tips of the SlungRear Deeders, how your beds. Let us salute the eponymous master of the verbal somersault, the Rev. William Archibald Spooner. 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.English is a fertile soil for spoonerisms, as author and lecturer Richard Lederer points out, because our language has more than three times as many words as any other – 616,500 and growing at 450 a year. Consequently, there's a greater chance that any accidental transposition of letters or syllables will produce rhyming substitutes that still make sense – sort of.
"Spooner," says Lederer, "gave us tinglish errors and English terrors at the same time."
Born in 1844 in London, Spooner became an Anglican priest and a scholar. During a 60-year association with Oxford University, he lectured in history, philosophy, and divinity. From 1876 to 1889, he served as a Dean, and from 1903 to 1924 as Warden, or president.
Spooner was an albino, small, with a pink face, poor eyesight, and a head too large for his body. His reputation was that of a genial, kindly, hospitable man. 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."
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.
Reverend Spooner's tendency to get words and sounds crossed up could happen at any time, but especially when he was agitated. 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."
Patriotic fervour excited Spooner as well. 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." And he lionised Britain's farmers as "noble tons of soil."
His goofs at chapel were legendary. "Our Lord is a shoving leopard," he once intoned. He quoted 1 Corinthians 13:12 as, "For now we see through a dark, glassly..." Officiating at a wedding, he prompted a hesitant bridegroom, "Son, it is now kisstomary to cuss the bride." And to a stranger seated in the wrong place: "I believe you're occupewing my pie. May I sew you to another sheet?"
Did Spooner really say, "Which of us has not felt in his heart a half-warmed fish?" he certainly could have – he was trying to say half-formed wish.
Lederer offers these other authentic spoonerisms: At a naval review Spooner marvelled at "this vast display of cattle ships and bruisers." To a school official's secretary: "Is the bean dizzy?" Visiting a friend's country cottage: "You have a nosey little crook here."
Two years before his death in 1930 at age 86, Spooner told an interviewer he could recall only one of his trademark fluffs. It was one he made announcing the hymn "Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take," meaning to say "Conquering Kings."
So if you have made a verbal slip, rest easy. Many have. Radio announcer Harry Von Zell once introduced the president as Hoobert Heever. And Lowell Thomas presented British Minister Sir. Stafford Cripps as Sir. Stifford Craps.
Thanks to Reverend Spooner's style-setting somersaults, our own little tips of the slung will not be looked upon as the embarrassing babblings of a nitwit, but rather the whimsical lapses of a nimble brain. So let us applaud that gentle man who lent his tame to the nerm. May sod rest his goal.