William Archibald Spooner

Spooner in 1900

Spooner as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, April 1898

William Archibald Spooner (22 July 1844 – 29 August 1930) was a British clergyman and long-serving Oxford don. He is best remembered for his absent-mindedness, and for supposedly mixing up the syllables in a spoken phrase, with unintentionally comic effect. Such phrases became known as spoonerisms, and are often used humorously. Many spoonerisms have been invented and attributed to Spooner.

Quotes

• You will find as you grow older that the weight of rages will press harder and harder upon the employer.
  • Quoted in William Hayter, Spooner: A Biography (1977), ch. 6

• Her late husband, you know, a very sad death—eaten by missionaries—poor soul!
  • Quoted in William Hayter, Spooner: A Biography (1977), ch. 6

• Kinquering Congs their titles take.
  • Announcing the hymn in New College Chapel, 1879. Quoted by Robert Seton, once a student of Spooner's, in The Daily Herald (28 September 1928), as the only authentic spoonerism.
  • See John Chandler

Disputed

Reported in Richard Lederer, Get Thee to a Punnery (Charleston, SC: Wyrick & Co., 1988), pp. 137–48:

• Three cheers for our queer old dean!
  • While giving a toast at a dinner, which Queen Victoria was also attending

• Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride?
  • As opposed to "customary to kiss"

• The Lord is a shoving leopard.
  • Instead of "a loving shepherd"

• A blushing crow.
  • "Crushing blow"

• A well-boiled icicle.
  • "Well-oiled bicycle"

• You were fighting a liar in the quadrangle.
  • "Lighting a fire"

• Is the bean dizzy?
  • "Dean busy"

• Someone is occupewing my pie. Please sew me to another sheet.
  • "Someone is occupying my pew. Please show me to another seat."

• You have hissed all my mystery lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. Please leave Oxford on the next town drain.
  • "You have missed all my history lectures. You have wasted a whole term. Please leave Oxford on the next down train."

Reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2nd ed. (1953), p. 511, but not in the 3rd ed. (1979), p. 517:

• You have deliberately tasted two worms and you can leave Oxford by the town drain.
  • Dismissing a student. Attributed

Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 12th ed. (1951), p. 1046:

• I remember your name perfectly, but I just can't think of your face.
  • A greeting