# Flutter-by, Butterfly

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flutter-by-butterfly/501717>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 2, 2009, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flutter-by-butterfly/501717 "2009-07-02T16:57:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Auntbeast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Auntbeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Auntbeast)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flutter-by-butterfly/501717/1 "2009-07-02T16:57:42Z")

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While hiking up to Rabun Bald yesterday, we saw lots of butterflies and the phrase flutter-by kept popping up in my head as being an unusual turn of a phrase where it actually describes the thing in question quite well.

Is there a term for this? Can you think of any others that do the same thing?

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**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flutter-by-butterfly/501717/2 "2009-07-02T17:22:35Z")

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There was the SR-71 Blackbird, which was called the RS-71 until the President misspoke. 🙂

As to the technical term, I’m ignorant.

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**Author:** ![J\_Cubed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@J\_Cubed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J_Cubed)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flutter-by-butterfly/501717/3 "2009-07-02T17:38:20Z")

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It’s a [spoonerism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism), which is a form of metathesis. I don’t know if we differentiate between spoonerisms that actually mean something (flutterby being a strong example) and ones that create nonsense words.