Spoonerisms are a spoken phenomenon, where the speaker mixes up the sounds at the

beginning of two words. They're best explained by example:

take a shower = shake a tower

As for the history and cultural background of spoonerisms, I'll leave that to the others.
You can find some details and another online database at www.comm-unity.net/jake/.
A more psychological/philosophical background can be found at
www.lsadc.org/Fromkin.html.

This list is sorted vaguely alphabetically. Each set appears in the order of its keyword
which is earliest in the alphabet. Example: west bay = best way would appear on this
list under the position for "bay."

Set A
pair of aces
Set B
air of paces
beer gut
gear butt
beer nuts
near butts
quarter beers
border queers
bitter Ben
better bin
Tony Bennett
bony tenet
I bent my wookie
I went my bookie
raspberry jam
jazz berry ram
wet butt
bet what
Betsy Lutz
let's see butts
much better
butch met 'er
kill birds
bill Kurds
jitterbug
bitter jug
blows your mind
mows your blind
blow your nose
know your blows
note book
boat nook
round butt
bound rut
bunghole
hung bowl
my bowl
buy/bye/by mole
brain candy
cane brandy
making spirits bright
breaking spirit's might
chicken breast
brick in chest
Brent Spiner
spent briner
butt cheeks
buck cheats
coffee table