"Peter Piper"
Illustration from Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation (1836 American ed.)
Nursery rhyme
Published	1813

"Peter Piper" is an English-language nursery rhyme and well-known alliteration tongue-twister. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19745. ^[1]

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 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? ^[2]

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

if he picked a peck of pickled peppers?^{[ citation needed]}

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. ^[3] Some authors have identified the subject of the rhyme as Pierre Poivre, an eighteenth‑century French horticulturalist and government administrator of Mauritius, who once investigated the Seychelles' potential for spice cultivation. ^{[4] [5]}

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). ^{[6] [7]}

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. ^{[8] [9]} Names of medications also tend to be confused when they start with the same few letters. ^[10]

References

External links

• Text of Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation at Project Gutenberg
• Peter Piper public domain audiobook at LibriVox