Two authors, Meringer and Mayer (a philologist and a psychiatrist) did indeed in 1895 make an attempt to approach the problem of slips of the tongue from this side. They collected examples and first treated them from a purely descriptive standpoint. This of course does not yet furnish any explanation, but it may lead the way to one. They differentiated the distortions which the intended phrase suffered through the slip into: interchanges (in the positions of words, syllables or letters), anticipations, perseverations, compoundings (contaminations), and substitutions. I will give you examples of these authors’ main categories. As an instance of an interchange (in the position of words) someone might say “The Milo of Venus” instead of “The Venus of Milo.” The well-known slip of the hotel-boy who, knocking at the bishop’s door, nervously replied to the question “Who is it?” “The Lord, my boy!” is another example of such an interchange in the position of words.[12] In the typical Spoonerism the position of certain letters is interchanged, as when the preacher said: “How often do we feel a half-warmed fish within us!”[12] It is a case of anticipation if anyone says: “The thought lies heartily...” instead of: “The thought lies heavily on my heart.” A perseveration is illustrated by the well-known ill-fated toast, “Gentlemen, I call upon (_auf_) you _hiccough_ (= _auf_zustossen) to (_auf_) to the health of our Chief.” (drink) (= _anz_ustossen) And when a member of the House of Commons referred to another as the “honourable member for Central _Hell_,” instead of “Hull,” it was a case of perseveration; as also when a soldier said to a friend “I wish there were a thousand of our men _mortified_ on that hill, Bill,” instead of “fortified.” In one case the _ell_ sound has perseverated from the previous words “m_e_mber for C_e_ntra_l_,” and in the other the _m_ sound in “_m_en” has perseverated to form “mortified.”[12] These three types of slip are not very common. You will find those cases much more frequent in which the slip happens by a compounding or contraction, as for example when a gentleman asks a lady if he may _insort_ her on her way (_begleit-digen_); this contraction is made up of _begleiten_ = to escort, and _beleidigen_ = to insult. (And by the way, a young man addressing a lady in this way will not have much success with her.) A substitution takes place when a poor woman says she has an “incurable _infernal_ disease,”[13] or in Mrs. Malaprop’s mind when she says, for instance, “few gentlemen know how to value the _ineffectual_ qualities in a woman.”[13]