"First of all," I said, "you need a well-boiled icicle." My listener laughed, "A what?" "Just what I said: a well-oiled bicycle." That’s how it was all morning, and things haven’t gone any better. My tongue is tired, and my brain has retired. This is not the time to start this essay. I’d better go and shake a tower. I did it again: go and take a shower.
I wanted these spoonerisms to appear accidental; they are both intentional. I found them on Wikipedia. I don’t know which are funnier, the accidental or the invented. Compare them to a couple of genuine spoonerisms by the Rev. Spooner himself: "I called you into the office because you were caught fighting a liar in the dormitory. (lighting a fire) You know as well as I do that you’ve tasted two worms." (wasted two terms) Whether spoonerisms are accidental or invented, Joe Kissel thinks Spooner "lives in our marts and hinds." (You don’t need my help with this one)Errors that are sometimes invented to appear accidental are called malaprops. The term honors Mrs. Malaprop, a character in The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. She still delights audiences using words that are "out of place," mal a propos, such as "She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile," (alligator) and "He’s the very pineapple of politeness." (pinnacle) Sheridan invented these errors for Mrs. Malaprop to speak with confidence and without any sense of being incorrect. An Army sergeant in a TV series was inclined to malaprops, and no recruit dared to correct him. On one episode, he wanted the soldiers to sing. "But Serge, we don’t have a piano." "Who needs a piano? I want you to sing Acapulco." (a cappella, without musical accompaniment)
The granddaddy of all language games is the pun. Here’s an example: Charles IV was so irritated with the puns of his jester that he locked him in a closet. "Your Majesty", his advisor said, "isn’t it too severe to locked the jester in a closet just for a pun?" "Oh, very well," said the King. "Jester, I will let you out of the closet if you promise to never again utter a pun. What say you?" There was a long silence, and then the jester proclaimed, "O pun the door!"
The pun has enjoyed a proud history, appearing frequently in the works of Shakespeare, John Donne, Andrew Marvel, and even the Bible. But the pun fell on hard times. Edgar Allan Poe thought the more intolerable the reaction, the better the pun. Today, puns are often met with groans, though the groaners are sometimes smiling. Here are some puns. Let’s see if you groan. Eventually, Charles IV’s jester was about to be hanged for punning. He was on the gallows in Old Town Square with a noose around his neck when the King’s advisor stopped the execution. "Jester," he announced so the crowd could hear, "the news is: If you promise to never pun again, you will not be hanged. What say you?" The jester looked at the crowd and said, "No noose is good noose."
From Mark Corner: "Drinkers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your brains." Famous expression: "To err is human, to forgive canine." A sign with the name of a dentist’s home and land: "Tooth Acres." Oscar Wilde: "Immanuel doesn’t pun; he Kant."
The point in all these word games is simple: If the listener/reader does not know the basis of the spoonerism, the malaprop, or the pun, then the word game fails. If "tooth achers" is not known to be the people who paid for the dentist’s house and land, then the joke is lost.
If "you have nothing to lose but your chains" is not familiar, "nothing to lose but your brains" falls flat.
There! Enough! I’m never going to write about errors again. "Go help me sod!"
RICHARD HAAS,
Oddělení studia jazyků ÚJČ AV ČR, v. v. i.
English
