You will recall the case of the young man who offered to “insort” an unknown lady. We took the liberty of resolving this word into “insult” and “escort,” and were quite convinced of this interpretation without requiring proof of it.[16] From these examples you can see that even these more obscure cases can be explained as the concurrence, or _interference_, of two different intentions of speech with one another; the differences arise only in that in the first type of slip the one intention has entirely excluded the other, as when the opposite is said; while in the second type the one intention only succeeds in distorting or modifying the other, from which arise combinations of a more or less senseless appearance. We believe that we have now discovered the secret of a large number of slips of the tongue. If we keep this clear in mind we shall be able to comprehend still further groups hitherto entirely mysterious. Although, for instance, in a case of distortion of a name we cannot suppose that it is always a matter of a contest between two similar but different names, yet the second intention is easily perceived. Distortions of names are common enough apart from slips of the tongue; they are attempts to liken the name to something derogatory or degrading, a common form of abuse, which educated persons soon learn to avoid but nevertheless do not willingly give up. It may be dressed up as a joke, although one of a very low order. To quote one gross and ugly example of such a distortion of a name, the name of the President of the French Republic, _Poincaré_, has lately been transformed into “_Schweinskarré_.” It is not going much further to assume that some such abusive intention may also be behind distortions of names produced by a slip of the tongue. In pursuing our idea, similar explanations suggest themselves for cases of slips where the effect is comic or absurd. In the case of the member of parliament who referred to the “honourable member for Central Hell,” the sober atmosphere of the House is unexpectedly disturbed by the intrusion of a word that calls up a ludicrous and unflattering image; we are bound to conclude from the analogy with certain offensive and abusive expressions that an impulse has interposed here, to this effect: “You needn’t be taken in. I don’t mean a word of this. To hell with the fellow!” The same applies to slips of the tongue which transform quite harmless words into obscene and indecent ones.[17] We are familiar with this tendency in certain people intentionally to convert harmless words into indecent ones for the sake of the amusement obtained; it passes for wit, and in fact when one hears of a case one at once asks whether it was intended as a joke or occurred unintentionally as a slip of the tongue.