A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. They most often are created when listening to a poem or a song. If the listener mishears a word or phrase and substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense, a mondegreen is created.
The word's origin goes back to 195a4 and was coined by American writer Sylvia Wright. She said that when she based it on a childhood incident. Her mother was reading her a poem called "The Bonny Earl of Murray." she had misheard the lyric "" in as "Lady Mondegreen".[4]
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o' Moray,
and layd him on the green.
Sylvia heard "and layd him on the green" as "and Lady Mondegreen."
The thing is that with a good mondegreen the misheard words should make a kind of sense in the context, if not a bit out of place. Sylvia's mishearing does make sense as "They have slain the Earl of Moray and Lady Mondegreen."
She didn't know a word to describe the situation so she created one. "Mondegreen" was included in the 2000 edition of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary, and in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added the word in 2008.
I only heard the word recently, but I've been hearing examples of mondegreens my entire life. They are particularly common in song lyrics.
A website full of misheard lyrics is kissthisguy.com (also a book -see bottom of post). If that sounds like an odd name for the website, here's the explanation. It seems that more than a few people have misheard a line in the song "Purple Haze" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" became "Scuse me while I kiss this guy." Jimi's psychedelic line becomes one making him bisexual.
Some others:
- From the first line of the national anthem of the United States - "O say can you see, by the dawn's early light" becomes "Jose, can you see, by the dawn's early light."
- "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival - "There's a bathroom on the right" is actually "There's a bad moon on the rise."
- From the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" someone seems to have misheard "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes" as "The girl with colitis goes by."
- "The ants are my friends / They're blowin' in the wind" instead of Bob Dylan's "The answer my friend/Is blowing' in the wind."
- "Sweet dreams are made of cheese" is the misheard in the Eurythmics "Sweet dreams are made of this."
- Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" has in its garbled lyrics the line "here we are now, entertain us" which has been misheard as "here we are now, in containers", "here we are now, hot potatoes" and other things.
- Two mondegreens that my mother created: She misheard Barry Manilow's title/lyric "Looks like we made it" as "Looks like tomatoes." She also heard on the radio in my car Paul Young's "Every Time You Go Away" and told me it was a stupid song because she heard the chorus not as "Every time you go away you take a piece of me with you," but as "Every time you go away you take a piece of meat with you." She was right. That is stupid.
Some examples really don't make much sense, but one that does comes from "Blinded by the Light" by Bruce Springsteen. He has the line "cut loose like a deuce" was misheard and recorded by Manfred Mann's Earth Band as "revved up like a deuce." Both the proper lyric and the mondegreen make sense as references to a deuce coupé, the 1932 Ford coupé that was popular with hot rodders. But there are more than 30 other mishearings from that song recorded on that website.
Mondegreens are not only in poems and songs. The book A Monk Swimming by Malachy McCourt got its title from a childhood mishearing of a phrase from the Catholic rosary prayer, the "Hail Mary." From "Blessed art thou among women" is the misheard and slightly logical "a monk swimmin'"
Another book title taken from a mondegreen is Olive, the Other Reindeer, a children's book by Vivian Walsh. The title is a mondegreen of the line, "all of the other reindeer" in the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
The film The Santa Clause plays with the idea of a misheard line. A child hearing the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas ("Twas the Night Before Christmas") hears the line "Out by the roof there arose such a clatter" as "Out by the roof there's a Rose Suchak ladder" which doesn't any sense. But in the film, Santa uses a ladder to climb to a chimney and it has the label Rose Suchak Ladders. That means the mondegreen is the lyric we think is the right one since the child's version is actually correct.
