Merriam-Webster Welcomes the Mondegreen
When the sales team at Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary posts its annual list of "new" words, it's easy to wax cynical. After all, a word usually has to ripen on the public vine for a few decades before it drops neatly syllabicated into the thin pages of a dictionary.
And for the most part, the "new" words released this week aren't likely to spark much excitement. "Subprime," "Texas Hold Em" and "webinar"? So last year. "Edamame" (young soy beans), "prosecco" (a variety of white grape), and "soju" (a rice beverage from Korea)? Even to a devout "pescetarian" (semi-vegetarian), these new words sound a lot like leftovers.
Admittedly, "wing nut" is a handy term for "one who advocates extreme measures or changes," but it's been around longer than Senator Robert Byrd. And an "infinity pool" appears metaphysically promising--but in fact it's only "a swimming pool constructed with the illusion of extending all the way to the horizon."
But there's one addition to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, that should delight logophiles everywhere, and that's the word mondegreen.
Coined in 1954 by the writer Sylvia Wright and later made popular by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll, a "mondegreen" is a word or phrase that results from mishearing or misinterpreting a song lyric (or any other text, for that matter). A mondegreen is a rare example (malapropism is another) of unintentional word play.
Almost everybody, it seems, has a private collection of mondegreens. Here are a few of my favorites:
- "Barney's the king of Israel" for "Born is the king of Israel," in the refrain of "The First Noel"
- "I've got two chickens with parrot eyes!" for the title line of Eddie Money's "Two Tickets to Paradise"
- "stuffing my face with his fingers" for "strumming my fate with his fingers," in Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly"
- "Doughnuts make your brown eyes blue" from Crystal Gayle's--well, I'm sure you recognize the (near) homonym
No disrespect to Merriam-Webster, but you don't have to buy a new dictionary to enjoy mondegreens. You can check out several more examples at our glossary entry for mondegreen. And just click on the comments button below to share your favorites.
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This won’t ever be a classic, but I had to email a young friend to find out the real words to the last phrase in Chevelle’s “The Red.” It’s actually “seeing red again,” but all I could get out of it was “seed raker.”
The “classic” mondegreen has always been the child who knew about “Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear” in church (Gladly The Cross I’d Bear).
mondegreen: nice try, but this is bs.
No mention of “in the garden of Eden.”
in-a-gon-a-da-ve-da, BABY
One of my favorites was mishearing Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets lyric “She’s got electric boots, a mohair suit” as “she’s got electic boobs, I know her Sue”
In Games Without Frontiers Peter Gabriel utters the chorus: “Jeux Sans Frontieres” which means Games Without Frontiers in French. It is often misheard as: “She’s So Popular.”
“Excuse me while I kiss this guy,” is a mondegreen that raises an occasional eyebrow during Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” when what the ever-intoxicated, hallucinating Jimi really sang was, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.”
(cue badass guitar solo)
I thought Billy Joel was crazy to sing about a weasel woman: “She’s a weasel woman to me…” I was quite relieved when I figured out that she was “always a woman.”
Many years ago, I read in Reader’s Digest about an engineer that dictated the following: “…this proposal was computed with a slide rule…” The letter came out saying: “…this proposal was computed with a sly drool…”
Nursery rhymes are a veritable reservoir for misheard phrases. Our favorite was 2 yr old daughter reciting Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet eating the curtains away rather than eating her curds and whey.
Mom says I liked a Pattie Page song, leave your fickle past behind—-my version was leave your pickle patch behind you.
My son once had a teacher who was the reincarnation of Mrs Malaprop. One of my favorites was when she asked the class to “give her a ball point figure”. She also informed them “Well, remember,class, our country is the melting point.”
Manfred Mann’s 1976 song had me “Blinded by The Light” for many years, thinking he was “… blinded by the light, wrapped up like a douche, another roller in the night…”
Two favorites:
“There’s a bathroom on the right” for “There’s a bad moon on the rise” from Creedance Clearwater.
Also, from Silent Night, I always heard: “Round John Virgin” instead of “‘Round Yon Virgin”
Whenever I hear U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name,” I hear “I see the toaster disappear without a trace.” Lyrics sites claim that he’s singing “dust cloud” instead of toaster, but I have my doubts.
A family friend used to say something had hit her “like a bowl of lighting” — instead of a bolt of lightning.
The Aussie national anthem goes “Australians all let us rejoice” but my son used to think it was “Australians all are ostriches” which really used to crack us up laughing!
It’s about time.
Some years ago, Reader’s Digest ran a column of mondegreens. My favorite was that of an elderly lady who misheard the Beatles’ “…the girl with kaleidoscope eyes…” as “…the girl with colitis goes by…”
Love mondegreens….how about ‘while shepherds washed their sox by night’ (while shepherds watched their flocks…)
Or ‘Howard be thy name’ (hallowed by thy name)
When I was a boy, I thought there was an angel named Harold; thus, we sang, “‘Hark!’ did Harold Angel sing . . .”
Later, in the early 1970’s, my mother was surprised to hear Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds sing “Don’t pour your love out on the pavement” when, in fact, they sang, “Don’t pull your love out on my, baby.”
And then I worked for a fellow who said “for all intensive purposes” and also wanted to “get down to brass tactics.”
I became interested in the concept of “mondegreen” in late 2007. One thing led to another, and now I’m the administrator of a flaky effort called theMandy Green Project, largely aimed at helping establish “mondegreen” as a household word. It involves a novel that centers on a mondegreen. Everyone is invited to check it out, but particularly anyone named Mandy Green!
When I was about ten years old every girl I knew had a crush on Paul McCartney. So we listened avidly to every Beatles song that came out. But most of us had trouble with the song “Can’t Buy Me Love”. We heard it as “can’t poppy love”. Honestly, I wasn’t the only one!
Foreign lyrics often inspire mondegreens, my favorite being the French “sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble” line in the Beatles’ Michelle, which as children my brothers and I heard as “Sunday Monkey won’t play piano song.” JB