Mondegreens

More to the point, did you know that there’s a word for such a misheard lyric or spoken phrase? It’s mondegreen.

I can hear your chorus now: “That’s a helluva word. What’s its origin? It’s not in my dictionary.” Well, it’s not in my OED2 either. Nor at AskOxford.com.

Why? Firstly: it goes back only to November 1954. Secondly: it’s unlikely to be in any but a recent large dictionary or on the Internet (where “new” words are always proudly flaunted by those in the know). So here’s the story, and for it I’m indebted to all such cognoscenti of neologisms — including Jennifer Stewart, the mob at Wikipedia, Jon Carroll at SfGate and Daniel Austin and friends at Fun with Words.

The term mondegreen is actually a coinage, almost certainly by a writer named Sylvia Wright (1917-1981) in an American magazine article (The Death of Lady Mondegreen). There’s some disagreement about her nationality, however: was she British or American? The magazine remains the subject of discussion, too: some say The Atlantic, other have it as Harper’s.

As a young child, Sylvia had listened to an anonymous 17th century ballad The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray (sometimes spelt Murray), which tells of the death of the disgraced but popular earl in 1592. Like many old ballads, it’s very long — over 60 stanzas, but what concerns us here is the one line

In The Death of Lady Mondegreen, Sylvia revealed that she had heard the line as

In adult life, Sylvia realised that this sort of error is quite common, and so in the article she suggested that a noun — mondegreen — be coined for all such mishearings. The name has stuck, so much so that we now have the series of books by Gavin Edwards: (a) ’Scuse Me . . . While I Kiss This Guy (And Other Misheard Lyrics), (b) He’s Got the Whole World in His Pants (And More Misheard Lyrics), (c) When a Man Loves a Walnut (And Even More Misheard Lyrics), (d) Deck the Halls With Buddy Holly (And Other Misheard Christmas Lyrics).

Here are some examples of pop music mondegreens reported on the Internet.

First, the line

has been mistaken for

while

has been misinterpreted as

and the words

have been understood as

Finally, the phrase

has been variously misheard as:

Mind you, mondegreening isn’t confined to popular songs:

A little further afield, many a bookseller or librarian has had to stifle a giggle when asked by a schoolkid something like

American readers should remember this recitation:

or perhaps in this form:

Here are some Christmas mondegreens:

Yes, I know: are all the above genuine mistakes, or are they concocted? They all claim to be fair dinkum, but your guess is as good as mine.

After all, a mondegreen should be an unintentional mishearing rather than conscious word play. Nevertheless, the temptation to make an artificial mondegreen is sometimes too hard to resist. This is the sort of thing we looked at in our musical puns column in Bikwil Issue 18 (March 2000), where some examples might well be called premeditated mondegreens A couple of my favourites:

In a way, the mondegreen resembles the malapropism. As you will know, the malapropism is named after Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals (1775). She’s the one who uttered immortal lines like

It’s worth keeping in mind that neither malapropisms nor mondegreens would be possible without one key factor.

I’m referring to the slurring of consonants so prevalent in spoken English, which is exaggerated by sound recording/broadcasting or one’s distance from the person singing or speaking.