Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a form of slang whereby the user transposes the initial letters of adjacent words; also attrib.; thus marrowskying, using this language.

1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 172: MARROWSKYING. — seemedical greek [Ibid.] 173: Medical Greek the slang used by medical students at the hospitals. At the London University they have a way of disguising English, described by Albert Smith as the Gower-street Dialect, which consists in transposing the initials of words, e.g., ‘poke a smipe’ ? smoke a pipe; ‘flutter-by’ ? butterfly, &c.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. [as cit. 1860].
1882		G.A. Sala in Living London (1883) Nov. 491: On the whole, the Kaukneigh Awlminek seems to consist in pretty equal proportions of the vocabulary of Tim Bobbin, Josh Billings, Joe Scoap, the ‘Fonetik Nuz’, and the Marrowsky language.
1885		Household Words 20 June 155: Medical students have liberally assisted in the formation of slang, their special department thereof being known as medical Greek [F&H].
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 178/2: A mowrowsky is often a transfer of two words, as in the Taming of the Shrew, where Grumio cries, in pretended fright, ‘The oats have eaten the horses’. During the Donnelly discussion (1888) wherein it was contended that the plays of Shakespeare had been written by Lord Bacon, an intended satirical mowrowsky was invented by an interchange of initials between the two names, Bakespeare and Shacon.
1962		Nabokov Pale Fire Index: Marrowsky, a, a rudimentary spoonerism, from the name of a Russian diplomat of the early 19th century, Count Komarovski, famous at foreign courts for mispronouncing his own name — Makarovski, Macaronski, Skomorovski, etc.
1964		B.S. Johnson Statement Against Corpses 82: D Aoctor bhall se been sy me, said Mr. Ball, a disciple of Marrowsky, that splendidly logical linguistical cipher in which the initial letters of contiguous words are, to their undoubted embellishment, transposed; and also given upon occasion to inversion.