22 July—In an email commenting on the Monitor’s Monday disquisition, a typically perceptive veteran newsman succinctly characterized Hearst’s dilatory publication of recent events as “yesterday’s news tomorrow.” Yes, we know that’s the title of a book on Jewish journalism in America, but if the shoe fits wear it, and the shoe fits perfectly.

The perfectly fitting shoe, which you don’t have to be Jewish to wear, perfectly segues to Spoonerism Day, celebrating the birth in 1844 of the Reverend Dr. William Archibald Spooner, affectionately known as Spoo. Notoriously absent-minded Anglican cleric, Fellow of New College, Oxford, for six decades and Warden for two, and namesake of spoonerisms, Spoo was immensely popular with both senior and junior members of the college and university. And Mrs. Spoo bore him five children.

Spoo didn’t invent spoonerisms, to be sure. They’re really just examples of metathesis, the transposition of sounds or letters (or anything else). Given the nature of human speech, accidental metathesis must go back to the earliest spoken language, but the earliest recorded examples are found in Ancient Greek texts. And they’re nothing like spoonerisms.

On the other hand, in the 16^th century, Rabelais used what the French call contrepèteries, deliberate metatheses, usually in dirty jokes. And these days it’s pretty safe to say that many spoonerisms are indeed deliberate—as well as humorous and intentionally risqué.

Spoo is celebrated for transposing the initial sounds in words, like “bunny phone” for “funny bone” and “belly jeans” for “jelly beans.” But it’s unlikely that he actually uttered all the spoonerisms that have been attributed to him. “The Lord is a shoving leopard” and “It is kisstomary to cuss the bride” were actually invented and circulated by New College undergraduates, for instance.

Spoo died on 29 August 1930 at 86 and the Monitor observed the dad say in 2024 with a few genuine or spurious spoonerisms:

Instead of “Can I show you another seat,” “Can I sew you to another sheet?”

Instead of “You have missed all of my history lectures and were caught lighting a fire in the quad,” “You have hissed all of my mystery lectures and were caught fighting a liar in the quad.”

Instead of “You have wasted two terms,” “You have tasted two worms.”

Instead of “There will be no kissing in the punts, gentlemen,” “There will be no pissing in the cunts, gentlemen.”

And if you’re wondering how “If the shoe fits, wear it” segues to spoonerisms, consider the moral of the sad tale about the explorer who ignored his native guide’s warning to not brush the excreta of the foo bird off his head and died: If the foo shits, wear it.

Not only in Oxford . . .