“I pledge a lesion to the flag, of the United State of America, and to the republic for Richard Stans, one naked individual, with liver tea and just this for all.”
I’ve recently stumbled upon something interesting, and there’s a word for it!
We’ve all misunderstood song lyrics before only to be stunned or disappointed that “Dirty deeds” are not “done dirt cheap.”
The word for mishearing a phrase is “Mondegreen.”
Are there any songs or phrases that you have totally misunderstood?
The following is from a website, which I reference below:
The word Mondegreen, meaning a mishearing of a popular phrase or song lyric, was coined by the writer Sylvia Wright.
As a child she had heard the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Murray” and had believed that one stanza went like this:
Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
They hae slay the Earl of Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen.
Poor Lady Mondegreen, thought Sylvia Wright. A tragic heroine dying with her liege; how poetic. When it turned out, some years later, that what they had actually done was slay the Earl of Murray and lay him on the green, Wright was so distraught by the sudden disappearance of her heroine that she memorialized her with a neologism.
I’m so glad there’s a name for it.
One to pull out when the conversation has died at a party:
All: (silent)
You: So did you know that the word for mishearing a popular phrase or lyricis called Mondegreen?
All: No, Wow! I always misheard [insert lyric here followed by laughter]
You: Yes, quite. It’s called Mondegreen.
All: Ahem.
All: (look around avoiding eye contact with you).
I think I’ll try that at my next party. … that’s funny, I don’t seem to be invited to any…
My ‘beginner’ jibe was a playfull dig at Steve and most definately not intended as a criticism of redundancy. I’d hate for that misunderstanding to exist.
I’ve never criticised ‘repeat’ threads as I realise they’re quite simply part of the nature of fora such as these and I’ve created my fair share of them.
I do quite often respond by linking to previous threads on the same topic because there is quite often information in other threads that have bearing on the topic/discussion and that may have been posted by people who are no longer active members of this community.
There’s a bunch of information on this site and by providing links between relevant threads, I hope to keep the info a little easier to find. This is more relevant to unicycling threads, but old habits die hard and I find myself doing it in JC as well.
I’m blessed with an emmenthaler memory which will remember the most arcane nonsense, but not the anniversary. (Fortunately I now have a reminder function in my cell phone for that.) This is pretty valuable when it comes to remembering old threads and specific posts.
But please, my comment and my link was not meant as a criticism of your thread. You’ve brought a very kewl posting energy to this forum and I’d hate for you to think that I’m a grump.
One of my favorite games to play is finding words for things there should be words for. Such as a group of unicyclists, or the collective masses of non-riders.
When I find there is a word for something like that, like Mondegreen, I get pretty excited.
There should be words for these things:
The linear pattern of smears generated on a window by a dog’s nose
The kink generated in long hair from a pony-tail elastic
Clods of dirt and ice that accumulate behind the wheels of cars
[B]WORMELOW TUMP /B
Any seventeen-year-old who doesn’t know about anything at all in the world other than bicycle gears.
[B]SPITTAL OF GLENSHEE /B
That which has to be cleaned off castle floors in the morning after a bagpipe contest or vampire attack.
GILDERSOME (adj.)
Descriptive of a joke someone tells you which starts well, but which becomes so embellished in the telling that you start to weary of it after scarcely half an hour.
[B]WOOLFARDISHWORTHY /B
A mumbled, mispronounced or misheard word in a song, speech or play. Derived from the well-known mumbles passage in Hamlet :
‘…and the spurns,
That patient merit of the unworthy
…takes
When he himself might his quietus
…make
With a bare bodkin? Who
…woolfardisworthy
To grunt and sweat under a weary
life?’
Here is a video of the song Kiss Me I’m Contagious done chock full of mondegreens. You don’t have to know the song, I didn’t, to appreciate it. It is by From First to Last, apparently a “post-hardcore” band. They’re screamo.
Theres also a lot of fallout boy mondegreens on google video.
Pretty much just type in one of their songs. Sometimes the mondegreens sounds more like the lyrics than the actual lyrics. Some of them are pretty weird.
Edit: make that all of them
And I have it by AC/DC and by Hayseed Dixie!:o