Tongue Twisters
- Ezio Pinza’s (singer at the Metropolitan Opera) favorite was, “Three gray geese in the green grass grazing; gray were the geese, and green was the grazing.”
- Actor Laurence Olivier often warms up with this one before going onstage: “Betty Botter bought a bit of butter, ‘But,” she said, ‘this butter’s bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter will make my batter better.’ So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter, and it made her batter better.”
- Boris Karloff lisped, and the letter “s” was his problem. Among the twisters he used were: “She sells seashells by the seashore”; “Sister Susie’s sewing shirts for soldiers”; “Slippery sleds slide smoothly down the sluiceway” ; “A snifter of snuff is enough snuff for a sniff for a snuff sniffer.” A twister used by some radio and television announcers before they perform is: “The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us.”
- The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.
- Nine out of 10 people can’t say this twice in rapid succession: “Sinful Caesar sipped his snifter, seized his knees and sneezed.” - Frederick John in Insight