Wednesday, February 9, 2011

A Speeding Spoonerism

Driving on I-75 North in Michigan recently, I passed an SUV with a large rear-window sticker that included the text (without image) seen below.
My first thought was that the SUV must belong to a psychiatrist with a sense of humor (one that probably hosts a radio show).

Upon googling the name, I learned that Dr. Freak Speely is actually the name of a band from Grand Blanc Michigan.

At any rate, the reason I mention this sighting is that I think the name could be one of the most appropriate spoonerisms I have seen of late; after all, it is often the case that people who speak freely are thought of as freaks.

For the uninitiated, here is the definition of spoonerism from Wikipedia - A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels or morphemes are switched (see metathesis). It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency.

3 comments:

Zoe said...

There's a gothic mansion, now used as a doctor's surgery, in Bristol, where the plaque outside declares the practitioner within to be 'Dr Freudenstein.' Not a Spoonerism at all, but possibly the scariest doctor in the South West, conjuring monsters and the dark depths of psycho-analysis...

Laura Payne said...

Zoe - Dr. Freak Speely and Dr. Freudenstein could share a medical suite in that gothic mansion.

Unknown said...

HA!! That would be my SUV in question, and that band would be my own:) The other guitar player pointed this post out to me. I'm not sure how he came across it. Thanks for the props on the topical word play. Keep up the wood gork;) ----Zym

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