"Peter Piper" is an

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the i ...

nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. From ...

and well-known

alliteration Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...

tongue-twister. It has a

Roud Folk Song Index The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the Londo ...

number of 19745.

Lyrics

The traditional version, as published in John Harris' ''Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation'' in 1813, is: : Peter Piper picked a peck of

pickled Pickling is the process of preserving or extending the shelf life of food by either anaerobic fermentation in brine or immersion in vinegar. The pickling procedure typically affects the food's texture and flavor. The resulting food is called ...

peppers, : A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked; : If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, : Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? Common modern versions include: :Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. : If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, :How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

Origins

The earliest version of this tongue-twister was published in ''Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation'' by John Harris (1756–1846) in London in 1813, which includes a one-name tongue-twister for each letter of the alphabet in the same style. However, the rhyme was apparently known at least a generation earlier. Some authors have identified the subject of the rhyme as Pierre Poivre, an eighteenthcentury French horticulturalist and government administrator of

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It ...

, who once investigated the

Seychelles Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (french: link=no, République des Seychelles; Creole: ''La Repiblik Sesel''), is an archipelagic state consisting of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, ...

' potential for spice cultivation.

Peter Piper Principle

The Peter Piper Principle is a cognitive error that people make, where they tend to confuse two words that resemble each other; in particular, when the first letter(s) are the same. Studies have shown that this applies when people confuse the names of other people (although other tendencies also apply). Novelists are well aware of the peril of giving two characters names that start with the same letter, because readers have a tendency to get them confused. Names of medications are also tend to be confused when they start with the same few letters.

References

External links

Text of ''Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation''
at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital libr ...

* {{librivox book , title=Peter Piper Tongue-twisters English nursery rhymes English folk songs English children's songs Traditional children's songs Nursery rhymes of uncertain origin Songs based on children's songs Songs about fictional male characters