Definition 1: A speech error involving the transposition of the initial consonants of two neighboring or proximate words, especially if the result is a funny meaningful phrase, e.g. "Our Lord is a shoving leopard" for "Our Lord is a loving shepherd."

Usage 1: According to his facetious students, who wrote up Dr. Spooner's [see Etymology] verbal mishaps after his passing, he supposedly toasted Her Highness Queen Victoria with, "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" and reassured his students during World War I, "When our boys come home from France, we will have the hags flung out." His students also claimed that he lionized Britain's farmers as "noble tons of soil."

Suggested usage: We would suggest you avoid spoonerisms except to enjoy those committed by others. So, we leave you with one more spake by the Right Reverend Spooner to one of his students: "You have hissed my mystery lectures and tasted the whole worm!"

Etymology: "Spoonerism" is a commonization of the surname of Reverend W. A. Spooner (1844-1930), who lectured and served as dean and warden at Oxford University for 60 years. That is, the proper noun "Spooner" became a common noun, "spooner" to which the suffix -ism was attached. Another way of putting it is that the Reverend Spooner is the eponym of "spoonerism." (Much gratitude is owed Sverrir Konradsson of Reykjavik, Iceland, who went in today's Sword of the Day—oops! Now I'm doing it.)