13 Comments

  1. The little guy at the right end does indeed resemble what are sold in the U. S. as “Vienna Sausages”, often packed in a tin.

    But if you ever call a hot dog a “wiener” that’s at base the same word, meaning a person or thing from Wien, i. e. Vienna.

  2. My kids just got a copy of “Runny Babbit” (a “billy sook” by Sel Shilverstein”) as a Christmas present. I found it surprising just how many of the twists required practice to render correctly, because the exchanged consonants often altered the “automatic” pronunciation of the subsequent vowel, or vice versa.

  3. From “The Man On The Flying Trapeze” as recorded by Doodles Weaver and Spike Jones.

    You know, a funny thing happened, a man came up to me and said,
    “Doodles, Doodles, did you leave home?
    I said, “I left home.”
    He said, “Did you put the cat out?”
    I said, “I didn’t know he was on fire!”

  4. I was quite pleased once to discover that the spoonerism for a vulgar phrase meaning “bowel movement” remained a vulgar phrase in the new form (though with different meaning).

  5. Son: I learned two new words in school today. “Narrative” means a tale, and “extinguish” means to put out.

    Father: That’s nice. Now grab the cat by the narrative and extinguish him.

  6. Mark in Boston – I heard it as a child being chided for using “bad words” in talking about a someone whose rear end was on fire and how he saved him – his mother telling him to use more polite language – So he repeats what he said as ” and then I had to extinguish his anecdote”

  7. Meryl A — That reminds me of the teacher who asked the boy if he did anything interesting over the weekend. The boy told the teacher about something he did a frog and a firecracker and specifically where he put the firecracker. The teacher corrected the bad word with the more formal word. The boy said “You bet I wrecked ‘im!”

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