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A Spoonerism is a form of malapropism, a transposition of words or
syllables in a sentence or phrase.  The defining characteristic of a Spoonerism
is that the transposed version has a meaning of its own and that meaning can
be related in some way to the meaning of the original version.  

Example:

What is the difference between a tribe of pygmies and the women's marathon team?

Answer:  One is a bunch of cunning runts....

Actually, the form "What is the difference between..." is considered a low-
rent form of Spoonerism since it violates an important criterion for a good
transposition pun.  That is that the two versions should be easily relateable
within the context of the joke.  The "What is the difference between..."
form is usually used only because there is no natural way to do this, and thus
the pun loses some of its elegance.  

The nice thing about Spoonerisms is that once you start to get the hang of
them, its easy to come up with your own.  In fact it can be quite addicting.
At the height of my spoonerism craze, I found myself reprocessing every sentence
I heard, searching for a Spoonerism.  If you're good at it, you'll be amazed
ar how common they are, and you can really annoy your friends in conversation!

Here is the first Spoonerism I ever created.  it still holds a special place
in my heart:

A young man was distressed that due to the recent blizzard, the highway
had been closed down, and he would be unable to drive home and have his
evening nap before attending the opera.  Staring down at his new loafers
which were bound to be ruined in his walk to the theatre, he thought to 
himself glumly," Well, I guess I'll just have to take my snooze through the
show."

By the way, the definitive reference on Sponnerisms is a book called
Cruel and Unusual Puns by Hauptman (can't remember the first name).

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Jeff Ely                         |    "He said the Sun's not yellow...  
Department of Economics          |     It's Chicken!" 
UC Berkeley                      |
jeff@econ.berkeley.edu           |