Mondegreen

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning.

American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.

"Mondegreen" was included in the 2000 edition of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added the word in 2008.

Mondegreens occur in languages other than English. Ghil'ad Zuckermann cites The Israeli example mukhrakhím liyót saméakh (‘we must be happy’) instead of (the high-register) úru akhím belév saméakh (‘wake up, brothers, with a happy heart’), from the well-known song Háva Nagíla (Let’s be Happy) ." A collection of items submitted by Hindi speakers (and relating mainly to songs in Bollywood movies) is available online.

A closely related category is the soramimi, which are songs that produce different meanings from those originally intended when interpreted in another language.

Etymology

In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the final line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad "The Bonny Earl O'Moray". She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green". Wright explained the need for a new term: "The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original."

Other examples Wright suggested are:

• Surely Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life ("Surely goodness and mercy…" from Psalm 23)
• The wild, strange battle cry "Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward." ("Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward," from "The Charge of the Light Brigade")

Examples

Examples in song lyrics

• The top three mondegreens submitted regularly to mondegreen expert Jon Carroll are:

1. "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear (from the line in the hymn "Keep Thou My Way" by Fanny Crosby, "Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I'll bear") Carroll and many others quote it as "Gladly the cross I'd bear".
2. There's a bathroom on the right (the line at the end of each verse of "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: "There's a bad moon on the rise")
3. 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song "Purple Haze", by Jimi Hendrix: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky").

Both Creedence's John Fogerty and Hendrix eventually capitalized on these mishearings and deliberately sang the "mondegreen" versions of their songs in concert.

• The song "Sea Lion Woman", was recorded in 1939 by Christine and Katherine Shipp, but was performed by Nina Simone under the title "See Line Woman" and later by Feist as "Sealion". According to the liner notes from the compilation "A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings," the actual title of this playground song might also be "See [the] Lyin' Woman" or "C-Line Woman."
• The title of the song "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", recorded in 1968 by Iron Butterfly arose because the original lyric "In The Garden of Eden" was misheard either by a member of the band or their entourage. This travelled full circle in an episode of The Simpsons when Bart replaces his church's scheduled hymn with a reworked version of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" titled "In the Garden of Eden" and supposedly written by "I. Ron Butterfly".
• The Joni Mitchell cover of the Lambert, Hendricks & Ross song "Twisted" includes a mondegreen: the original lyric They all laughed at A. Graham Bell was misheard and subsequently recorded by Mitchell as They all laugh at angry young men.
• The song "The Israelites" by Desmond Dekker was used in a television commercial for Maxell cassette tapes in 1990 in the UK which attempted to make a mondegreen of most of the song to imply you would not have these issues if you listened to the song on Maxell tapes. The title of the song can be misheard as "my ears are alight".
• When Bob Dylan offered cannabis to The Beatles, he was surprised to find they had not tried it before; he had misheard the lyric "I can't hide" in "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as "I get high".
• "Sofa away from me" from the song "So Far Away From Me" by "Dire Straits".

Examples in literature

• In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, reference is made to Laura Wingfield's bout with pleurosis during high school. At the time, Laura entertained timid but romantic feelings for Jim, who upon asking about her absence, mistakenly hears her say "blue roses" and carelessly adopts the moniker for her.
• In The World According to Garp by John Irving, Garp's young child is warned to beware of the undertow while bathing in the sea. Garp realizes later that the child had understood "Under Toad" and pictured a menacing creature under the sea surface.
• In Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary, Ramona is taught to sing the U.S. national anthem, and mishears the opening line ("O! say can you see by the dawn's early light") as "Oh say, can you see, by the dawnzer lee light". This leads her to believe that a dawnzer is some form of a lamp, and when Beezus (her sister) is having trouble seeing to read, Ramona suggests that she turn on the dawnzer, to much confusion.
• One of Ed McBain's novels is entitled Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear.
• In children's literature, a book entitled A Little Pigeon Toad, written and illustrated by the actor Fred Gwynne, offers amusing examples of how children can misinterpret words and phrases.

Examples in television

• "Mondegreens" is the name of a segment on the Australian music quiz show Spicks and Specks (ABC TV).
• In Rugrats, several episodes involved the child characters being susceptible to mondegreens when hearing the adult characters talk, and were often the basis for the quests the child characters went on.
• Some blogs and web sites refer to "Alexa Hente" as a person somehow associated with a TV coffee commercial. The allusion is a mis-hearing of "El Exigente," a choosy character known as "the demanding one" in Savarin coffee commercials of the 1960s-'70s. The character, a commercial mascot similar to Juan Valdez, was played by Carlos Montalbán, brother of actor Ricardo Montalbán.

Reverse mondegreen

There are compositions which appear nonsensical, but which can be interpreted homophonically as a rational text. A prominent example is Mairzy Doats, a 1943 novelty song by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston, which works the other way around. The lyrics are a mondegreen and it's up to the listener to figure out what they mean.

The refrain of the song repeats nonsensical sounding lines:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe

The clue to the meaning is contained in the bridge:

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,

Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy."

The listener can figure out that the last line of the refrain is "A kid'll eat ivy, too; wouldn't you?", but this line is sung only as a mondegreen.

In a more recent example, the video Hatten är din reinterprets an Arabic lyric into nonsense Swedish lyrics.

Deliberate mondegreen

Main article: Homophonic transformation

Luis van Rooten produced a volume of pseudo-French poetry, Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames, complete with critical, historical and interpretive apparatus, which are actually elaborate, extended mondegreens for English-language nursery rhymes. This can also be considered soramimi, which produces different meanings when interpreted in another language. Some performers and writers have used deliberate mondegreens to create double entendres, including:

• The lyric "if you see Kay" (F-U-C-K) was employed by blues pianist Memphis Slim in 1963, R. Stevie Moore in 1977, April Wine on its 1982 album Power Play, the Poster Children in 1990, and Turbonegro in 2005, as well as a line from James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses. Britney Spears did the same thing with the song "If U Seek Amy", in which the lyric All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy can easily be misheard as All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to F-U-C-K me.
• The liner notes in the album Ænima by the metal band Tool feature the phrase see you auntie (C-U-N-T).

See also

• Ambiguity
• A Monk Swimming
• Amphibology
• Double entendre
• Eggcorn
• Folk etymology
• Holorime
• Homophonic translation

• Mad Gab
• Mind Rhyme
• Olive, the Other Reindeer
• Optical illusion (visual analogy)
• Phono-semantic matching
• Malapropism
• Relaxed pronunciation
• Satiric misspelling
• Soramimi
• Subliminal message

Further reading

• Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy — Gavin Edwards, 1995. ISBN 0-671-50128-3
• When a Man Loves a Walnut — Gavin Edwards, 1997. ISBN 0-684-84567-9
• He's Got the Whole World in His Pants — Gavin Edwards, 1996. ISBN 0-684-82509-0
• Deck The Halls With Buddy Holly — Gavin Edwards, 1998. ISBN 0-06-095293-8
• Chocolate Moose for Dinner — Fred Gwynne, 1988. ISBN 0-671-66741-6

External links

• Misheard lyrics to Christmas songs are immortalized as 'mondegreens' (from Snopes.com)
• "Mondegreens Ripped My Flesh" - columns by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll
• Man-bol lists numerous Hindi mondegreens, mainly from Bollywood movie songs
• The Archive of Funny Misheard Music Lyrics
• Am I Right - Misheard Song Lyrics, Latest Additions