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A SPIN HISTORY LESSON: KNIFERISMS, SPOONERISMS AND MADDENISMS

Guest post by: Thomas J. Madden

Article Overview: A brief history spin on spoonerisms, kniferisms, malapropisms and now maddenisms.

A SPIN HISTORY LESSON: KNIFERISMS, SPOONERISMS AND MADDENISMS

Spoonerisms are those oft funny errors in speech or deliberate plays on words like The Kinquering Congs their titles take attributed to The Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930).

Kniferisms and forkerisms are an offshoot of spoonerisms invented by Douglas Hofstadter. They include such actual blunders as . . . word regarding an impending Presidential veto had come from a high White House souse (instead of source) and the most famous of flubs, when radio announcer Harry von Zell accidentally mispronounced a President's name as Hoobert Heever.

Malapropisms are an invention of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan used in his 1775 play The Rivals and in particular by a character Mrs. Malaprop who frequently misspoke to great comic effect as when she called someone as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of Nile (instead of an alligator). More modern derivatives are off-the-docks Jews (for Orthodox Jews), battery-operated transvestite radios and the Women's Lubrication Movement.

Maddenisms are derived from verbal and physical concoctions of a 21^st Century spin man named Thomas James Madden who invented them to obtain publicity for himself or his clients. Among them was a Knife and Forklift that he actually patented. It was a combination of utensils and dumbbells that Madden claimed could help overeaters eat slower and exercise while they ate, or at least exercise restraint. For comic effect in interviews, Madden was famous for quips like overeaters use their digestive tract like a race track.

Another of Madden's outlandish inventions was the Hair IQ Score by which celebrities and political figures of the time were rated along a scale of 1 (balding) 1 to a perfectly full-headed Ronald Reagan 10. Madden used the ratings to predict "out combs" of what he termed "hair-tight" political races in congressional and gubernatorial elections in 2010, which he said could be won by--what else--a hair.

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Article Tags: communications, history, inventions, Madden, phrases, Sheridan, speech, Spooner, terms, trivia



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