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A mondegreen () is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. "A misunderstood or misinterpreted word or phrase resulting from a mishearing, esp. of the lyrics to a song". Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense. The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, recalling a childhood memory of her mother reading the Scottish ballad " The Bonnie Earl o' Moray", and mishearing the words "laid him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen". "Mondegreen" was included in the 2000 edition of the ''Random House Webster's College Dictionary'', and in the ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
'' in 2002. Merriam-Webster's ''Collegiate Dictionary'' added the word in 2008.


Etymology

In a 1954 essay in ''
Harper's Magazine ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States. ''Harper's Magazine'' has ...
'', Sylvia Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the
ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Eur ...
" The Bonnie Earl o' Moray" (from Thomas Percy's 1765 book '' Reliques of Ancient English Poetry''). She wrote: The correct lines are, "They hae slain the Earl o' Moray / And ''laid him on the green''." Wright explained the need for a new term:


Psychology

People are more likely to notice what they expect rather than things that are not part of their everyday experiences; this is known as
confirmation bias Confirmation bias (also confirmatory bias, myside bias, or congeniality bias) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or Value (ethics and social sciences), val ...
. A person may mistake an unfamiliar stimulus for a familiar and more plausible version. For example, to consider a well-known mondegreen in the song " Purple Haze", one may be more likely to hear
Jimi Hendrix James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Inducted ...
singing that he is about to ''kiss this guy'' than that he is about to ''kiss the sky''. Similarly, if a lyric uses words or phrases that the listener is unfamiliar with, or in an uncommon sentence structure, they may be misheard as using more familiar terms. The creation of mondegreens may be driven in part by
cognitive dissonance In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. Being confronted by situations that challenge this dissonance may ultimately result in some ...
; the listener finds it psychologically uncomfortable to listen to a song and not make out the words. Steven Connor suggests that mondegreens are the result of the brain's constant attempts to make sense of the world by making assumptions to fill in the gaps when it cannot clearly determine what it is hearing. Connor sees mondegreens as the "wrenchings of nonsense into sense". This dissonance will be most acute when the lyrics are in a language in which the listener is fluent."it turns out that listeners to popular music seem to grope in a fog of blunder, botch, and misprision, making flailing guesses at sense in the face of what seems to be a world of largely unintelligible utterance" On the other hand,
Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychology, cognitive psychologist, psycholinguistics, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psycholo ...
has observed that mondegreen mishearings tend to be ''less'' plausible than the original lyrics, and that once a listener has "locked in" to a particular misheard interpretation of a song's lyrics, it can remain unquestioned, even when that plausibility becomes strained (see mumpsimus). Pinker gives the example of a student "stubbornly" mishearing the chorus to "
Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...
" ("I'm your
Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...
") as "I'm your penis", and being surprised that the song was allowed on the radio. The phenomenon may, in some cases, be triggered by people hearing "what they want to hear", as in the case of the song " Louie Louie": parents heard obscenities in the Kingsmen recording where none existed. James Gleick states that the mondegreen is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Without the improved communication and language standardization brought about by radio, he argues that there would have been no way to recognize and discuss this shared experience. Just as mondegreens transform songs based on experience, a
folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
learned by repetition often is transformed over time when sung by people in a region where some of the song's references have become obscure. A classic example is " The Golden Vanity", which contains the line "As she sailed upon the lowland sea". British immigrants carried the song to Appalachia, where later generations of singers, not knowing what the term '' lowland sea'' refers to, transformed it over generations from "lowland" to "lonesome".


Examples


In songs

The national anthem of the United States is highly susceptible to the creation of mondegreens, two in the first line. Francis Scott Key's "
The Star-Spangled Banner "The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States. The lyrics come from the "Defence of Fort M'Henry", a poem written by American lawyer Francis Scott Key on September 14, 1814, after he witnessed the bombardment of Fort ...
" begins with the line "O say can you see, by the dawn's early light". This has been misinterpreted (both accidentally and deliberately) as "José, can you see", another example of the Hobson-Jobson effect, countless times. The second half of the line has been misheard as well, as "by the donzerly light", or other variants. This has led to many people believing that "donzerly" is an actual word. Religious songs, learned by ear (and often by children), are another common source of mondegreens. The most-cited example is "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear" Drawings by Bernarda Bryson. Reprinted in: Contains the essays "The Death of Lady Mondegreen" and "The Quest of Lady Mondegreen". (from the line in the hymn "Keep Thou My Way" by Fanny Crosby and Theodore E. Perkins: "Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I'll bear"). Jon Carroll and many others quote it as "Gladly the cross ''I'd'' bear"; note that the confusion may be heightened by the unusual object-subject-verb (OSV) word order of the phrase. The song " I Was on a Boat That Day" by Old Dominion features a reference to this mondegreen. Mondegreens expanded as a phenomenon with radio, and, especially, the growth of rock and roll (and even more so with rap). Among the most-reported examples are: #"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"). #"’Scuse me while I kiss this guy" (from a lyric in the song "Purple Haze" by
The Jimi Hendrix Experience James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Inducted ...
: "’Scuse me while I kiss the sky"). #"The girl with colitis goes by" (from a lyric in the
Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...
song " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds": "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes") Both Creedence's John Fogerty and Hendrix eventually acknowledged these mishearings by deliberately singing the "mondegreen" versions of their songs in concert. " Blinded by the Light", a cover of a
Bruce Springsteen Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American Rock music, rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Nicknamed "the Boss", Springsteen has released 21 studio albums spanning six decades; most of his albums feature th ...
song by
Manfred Mann's Earth Band Manfred Mann's Earth Band are an English rock band formed by South African musician Manfred Mann (musician), Manfred Mann. Their hits include covers of Bruce Springsteen's "For You (Bruce Springsteen song), For You", "Blinded by the Light" an ...
, contains what has been called "probably the most misheard lyric of all time"., Blogcritics Music The phrase "revved up like a deuce", altered from Springsteen's original "cut loose like a deuce", both lyrics referring to the hot rodders slang ''deuce'' (short for deuce coupé) for a 1932 Ford coupé, is frequently misheard as "wrapped up like a douche". Springsteen himself has joked about the phenomenon, claiming that it was not until Manfred Mann rewrote the song to be about a "feminine hygiene product" that the song became popular. Another commonly cited example of a song susceptible to mondegreens is
Nirvana Nirvana, in the Indian religions (Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), is the concept of an individual's passions being extinguished as the ultimate state of salvation, release, or liberation from suffering ('' duḥkha'') and from the ...
's " Smells Like Teen Spirit", with the line "here we are now, entertain us" variously being misinterpreted as "here we are now, ''in containers''", and "here we are now, ''hot potatoes''", among other renditions. In the 2014 song " Blank Space" by
Taylor Swift Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Known for her autobiographical songwriting, artistic versatility, and Cultural impact of Taylor Swift, cultural impact, Swift is one of the Best selling artists, w ...
, listeners widely misheard the line "got a long list of ex-lovers" as "all the lonely
Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational List of coffeehouse chains, chain of coffeehouses and Starbucks Reserve, roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gor ...
lovers". Rap and hip-hop lyrics may be particularly susceptible to being misheard because they do not necessarily follow standard pronunciations. The delivery of rap lyrics relies heavily upon an often-regional pronunciation or non-traditional accenting (see
African-American Vernacular English African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, voc ...
) of words and their
phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...
to adhere to the artist's stylizations and the lyrics' written structure. This issue is exemplified in controversies over alleged transcription errors in
Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...
's 2010 ''Anthology of Rap''.


Standardized and recorded mondegreens

Sometimes, the modified version of a lyric becomes standard, as is the case with " The Twelve Days of Christmas". The original has "four colly birds" (''colly'' means ''black''; compare ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a Comedy (drama), comedy play written by William Shakespeare in about 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One s ...
'': "Brief as the lightning in the collied night"); by the turn of the twentieth century, these had been replaced by ''calling'' birds, which is the lyric used in the now-standard 1909 Frederic Austin version. Another example is found in ELO's song " Don't Bring Me Down". The original recorded lyric was "don't bring me down, Gruss!", but fans misheard it as "don't bring me down, Bruce!". Eventually, ELO began playing the song with the mondegreen lyric. The song " Sea Lion Woman", recorded in 1939 by Christine and Katherine Shipp, was performed by Nina Simone under the title " See Line Woman". According to the liner notes from the compilation ''A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings'', the correct title of this playground song might also be "See heLyin' Woman" or "C-Line Woman". Jack Lawrence's misinterpretation of the French phrase "pauvre Jean" ("poor John") as the identically pronounced "pauvres gens" ("poor people") led to the translation of ''La Goualante du pauvre Jean'' ("The Ballad of Poor John") as " The Poor People of Paris", a hit song in 1956.


In literature

'' A Monk Swimming'' by author Malachy McCourt is so titled because of a childhood mishearing of a phrase from the Catholic rosary prayer, Hail Mary. "Amongst women" became "a monk swimmin. The title and plot of the short science fiction story "Come You Nigh: Kay Shuns" ("Com-mu-ni-ca-tions") by Lawrence A. Perkins, in ''
Analog Science Fiction and Fact ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled ''Astounding Stories of Super-Science'', the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William Cla ...
'' magazine (April 1970), deals with securing interplanetary radio communications by encoding them with mondegreens. ''Olive, the Other Reindeer'' is a 1997 children's book by Vivian Walsh, which borrows its title from a mondegreen of the line "all of the other reindeer" in the song " Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". The book was adapted into an animated Christmas special in 1999. The travel guidebook series
Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History 20th century Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen Wheeler, Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 19 ...
is named after the misheard phrase "lovely planet" sung by
Joe Cocker John Robert "Joe" Cocker (20 May 1944 – 22 December 2014) was an English singer known for his gritty, bluesy voice and dynamic stage performances featuring expressive body movements. Most of his best-known singles, such as "Feelin' Alright ...
in Matthew Moore's song "Space Captain".


In film

A monologue of mondegreens appears in the 1971 film '' Carnal Knowledge''. The camera focuses on actress Candice Bergen laughing as she recounts various phrases that fooled her as a child, including "Round John Virgin" (instead of "'Round yon virgin...") and "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear" (instead of "Gladly the cross I'd bear"). The title of the 2013 film '' Ain't Them Bodies Saints'' is a misheard lyric from a folk song; director David Lowery decided to use it because it evoked the "classical, regional" feel of 1970s rural Texas. In the 1994 film '' The Santa Clause'', a child identifies a ladder that Santa uses to get to the roof from its label: The Rose Suchak Ladder Company. He states that this is "just like the poem", misinterpreting "out on the lawn there arose such a clatter" from '' A Visit from St. Nicholas'' as "Out on the lawn, there's a Rose Suchak ladder".


In television

Mondegreens have been used in many television advertising campaigns, including: * An advertisement for the 2012
Volkswagen Passat The Volkswagen Passat is a nameplate of D-segment, large family cars (D-segment) manufactured and marketed by the German automobile manufacturer Volkswagen since 1973 and also marketed variously as the Dasher, Santana, Quantum, Magotan, Corsar ...
touting the car's audio system shows a number of people singing incorrect versions of the line "Burning out his fuse up here alone" from the
Elton John Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, songwriter and pianist. His music and showmanship have had a significant, lasting impact on the music industry, and his songwriting partnership with l ...
/
Bernie Taupin Bernard John Taupin (born 22 May 1950) is an English lyricist and visual artist. He is best known for his songwriting partnership with Elton John, recognised as one of the most successful partnerships of its kind in history. Taupin co-wrote th ...
song " Rocket Man", until a woman listening to the song in a Passat realizes the correct words. * A 2002 advertisement for
T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand of telecommunications by Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (, ; often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a partially state-owned German telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn and the largest telec ...
shows spokeswoman Catherine Zeta-Jones helping to correct a man who has misunderstood the chorus of
Def Leppard Def Leppard are an English Rock music, rock band formed in Sheffield in 1977. Since 1992, the band has consisted of Rick Savage (bass, backing vocals), Joe Elliott (lead vocals), Rick Allen (drummer), Rick Allen (drums), Phil Collen (guitar, ...
's " Pour Some Sugar On Me" as "pour some shook up ramen". * A series of advertisements for Maxell audio cassette tapes, produced by Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury, shown in 1989 and 1990, featured misheard versions of "
Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...
" (e.g., "Me ears are alight") by Desmond Dekker and " Into the Valley" by the Skids as heard by users of other brands of tape. * A 1987 series of advertisements for Kellogg's ''Nut 'n Honey Crunch'' featured a joke in which one person asks "What's for breakfast?" and is told "Nut 'N' Honey", which is misheard as "Nothing, honey".


In video games

The video game '' Super Mario 64'' involved a mishearing during
Mario Mario (; ) is a Character (arts), character created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the star of the ''Mario (franchise), Mario'' franchise, a recurring character in the ''Donkey Kong'' franchise, and the mascot of the Ja ...
's encounters with Bowser.
Charles Martinet Charles Andre Martinet (born September 17, 1955) is an American actor. He is best known for voicing Mario in the ''Super Mario'' franchise, portraying him from 1991 to 2023. He also voiced other characters in the series such as Luigi, Wario, W ...
, the voice actor for Mario, explained the line was "So long, King-a Bowser"; however, it was misheard as "So long, gay Bowser". The misinterpreted line became a
meme A meme (; ) is an idea, behavior, or style that Mimesis, spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying c ...
, in part popularized by the line's removal in some updated rereleases of the game. Other games in the ''Mario'' series, like ''
Mario Party is a series of party video games created by Hudson Soft and owned by Nintendo. It features List of Mario franchise characters, characters from the Mario (franchise), ''Mario'' franchise in which up to four local players or Artificial inte ...
'' and '' Mario Kart 64'', also involve a mondegreen. Whenever the character
Wario is a character in Nintendo's Mario (franchise), ''Mario'' franchise that was designed as an Archenemy, archnemesis to Mario. Wario first appeared as the main antagonist and final Boss (video games), boss in the 1992 Game Boy game ''Super Mar ...
loses a minigame or a race, respectively, he says something along the lines of, "D'oh! I missed!" However, since he was originally designed to be German and his original voice actor, Thomas Spindler, was German, many people have heard this voice line as the German phrase "So ein Mist!", which means "oh, crap" in English. Spindler has said that this was the line he recorded in an interview in 2016. Charles Martinet, who is Wario's voice actor, has said that the voice line he recorded for the game was indeed "D'oh! I missed!" in 2020. In the video game '' Final Fantasy XIV'', the lyrics for the boss theme "Ultima" are "Beat, the heart of Sabik" but the English-speaking audience heard the voice lines as "big fat tacos" instead. This resulted in fan video remixes with the misunderstood lyrics.} Developer Square Enix acknowledged the misunderstanding and embraced the joke, and made tacos a major plot point in the expansion ''Dawntrail''.


Other notable examples

The traditional game "Telephone" or "Gossip" (in North America; it has a number of other names in other countries) involves mishearing a whispered sentence to produce successive mondegreens that gradually distort the original sentence as it is repeated by successive listeners. Among schoolchildren in the US, daily rote recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance has long provided opportunities for the genesis of mondegreens. Speech-to-text functionality in modern smartphone messaging apps and search or assist functions may be hampered by faulty
speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...
. It has been noted that in text messaging, users often leave uncorrected mondegreens as a joke or puzzle for the recipient to solve. This wealth of mondegreens has proven to be a fertile ground for study by speech scientists and psychologists.


Notable collections

The classicist and
linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
Steve Reece has collected examples of English mondegreens in song lyrics, religious creeds and liturgies, commercials and advertisements, and jokes and riddles. He has used this collection to shed light on the process of "junctural metanalysis" during the oral transmission of the ancient Greek epics, the ''
Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; , ; ) is one of two major Ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odyssey'', the poem is divided into 24 books and ...
'' and ''
Odyssey The ''Odyssey'' (; ) is one of two major epics of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and remains popular with modern audiences. Like the ''Iliad'', the ''Odyssey'' is divi ...
''.


Reverse mondegreen

A reverse mondegreen is the intentional production, in speech or writing, of words or phrases that seem to be gibberish but disguise meaning. A prominent example is '' Mairzy Doats'', a 1943
novelty song A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and w ...
by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston. The lyrics are a reverse mondegreen, made up of same-sounding words or phrases (sometimes also referred to as "oronyms"), so pronounced (and written) as to challenge the listener (or reader) to interpret them: ::Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey ::A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you? The clue to the meaning is contained in the bridge of the song: ::If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey, ::Sing "
Mare A mare is an adult female horse or other equidae, equine. In most cases, a mare is a female horse over the age of three, and a filly is a female horse three and younger. In Thoroughbred horse racing, a mare is defined as a female horse more th ...
s eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy." That makes it clear that the last line is "A kid'll eat ivy, too; wouldn't you?"


Deliberate mondegreen

Two authors have written books of supposed foreign-language poetry that are actually mondegreens of nursery rhymes in English. Luis van Rooten's pseudo-French '' Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames'' includes critical, historical, and interpretive apparatus, as does John Hulme's ''Mörder Guss Reims'', attributed to a fictitious German poet. Both titles sound like the phrase " Mother Goose Rhymes". Both works can also be considered soramimi, which produces different meanings when interpreted in another language. The genre of animutation is based on deliberate mondegreen.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...
produced a similar effect in his canon " Difficile Lectu" (Difficult to Read), which, though ostensibly in Latin, is actually an opportunity for
scatological In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of faeces. Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (nutrition), diet (and thus habitat (ecology), where ...
humor in both German and Italian. Some performers and writers have used deliberate mondegreens to create
double entendre A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, one of which is typically obvious, and the other often conveys a message that would be too socially unacc ...
s. The phrase "if you see Kay" ( F-U-C-K) has been employed many times, notably as a line from
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
's 1922 novel '' Ulysses''. "Mondegreen" is a song by Yeasayer on their 2010 album, '' Odd Blood''. The lyrics are intentionally obscure (for instance, "Everybody sugar in my bed" and "Perhaps the pollen in the air turns us into a stapler") and spoken hastily to encourage the mondegreen effect. Anguish Languish is an ersatz language created by Howard L. Chace. A play on the words "English Language", it is based on homophonic transformations of English words and consists entirely of deliberate mondegreens that seem nonsensical in print but are more easily understood when spoken aloud. A notable example is the story "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" (" Little Red Riding Hood"), which appears in his collection of stories and poems, ''Anguish Languish'' (Prentice-Hall, 1956).
Lady Gaga Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known for her image reinventions and versatility across the entertainment industry, she is an influ ...
's 2008 hit " Poker Face" allegedly makes a play on this phenomenon, with every second repetition of the phrase "poker face" replaced with "fuck her face". The only known radio station to censor the lyrics has been KIIS FM.


Related linguistic phenomena

Closely related categories are Hobson-Jobson, where a word from a foreign language is homophonically translated into one's own language, e.g. "
cockroach Cockroaches (or roaches) are insects belonging to the Order (biology), order Blattodea (Blattaria). About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Some species are well-known Pest (organism), pests. Modern cockro ...
" from Spanish , and '' soramimi'', a Japanese term for deliberate homophonic misinterpretation of words for humor. An unintentionally incorrect use of similar-sounding words or phrases, resulting in a changed meaning, is a
malapropism A malapropism (; also called a malaprop, acyrologia or Dogberryism) is the incorrect use of a word in place of a word with a similar sound, either unintentionally or for comedic effect, resulting in a nonsensical, often humorous utterance. An exam ...
. If there is a connection in meaning, it may be called an eggcorn. If a person stubbornly continues to mispronounce a word or phrase after being corrected, that person has committed a mumpsimus. Related phenomena include: *
Earworm An earworm or brainworm, also described as sticky music or stuck song syndrome, is a Catchiness, catchy or memorable piece of music or saying that continuously occupies a person's mind even after it is no longer being played or spoken about. In ...
* Eggcorn * Holorime * Homophonic translation *
Hypercorrection In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a ...
*
Phono-semantic matching Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots f ...
* Spoonerism * Syntactic ambiguity


Non-English languages


Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian

Queen Queen most commonly refers to: * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen (band), a British rock band Queen or QUEEN may also refer to: Monarchy * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Q ...
's song "
Another One Bites the Dust "Another One Bites the Dust" is a song by the British Rock music, rock band Queen (band), Queen. Written by bassist John Deacon, the song was featured on the group's eighth studio album ''The Game (Queen album), The Game'' (1980). It was a worl ...
" has a long-standing history as a mondegreen in Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, misheard as "''Radovan baca daske''" and "''Радован баца даске''", which means " Radovan throws planks".


Czech

In the Czech anthem, ''
Kde domov můj "" (), known in English as "Where My Home Is", is the national anthem of the Czech Republic. It was composed by František Škroup and written by Josef Kajetán Tyl. History The piece was written as a part of the incidental music to the co ...
'', the sentence ("midst the rocks sigh fragrant pine groves") is sometimes misheard as ("Boryš is good at mountaineering"). Another popular Czech mondegreen is in the lyrics of ''Nina'' by singer-songwriter
Tomáš Klus Tomáš Klus (born 15 May 1986) is a Czech musician and songwriter from the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. Life and career Klus was born in the industrial town of Třinec, where he spent most of his childhood. His parents were ...
, where the sentence ("When the tears of
muse In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, the Muses (, ) were the Artistic inspiration, inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric p ...
s fall on my lips") is often misheard as ("When the
minaret A minaret is a type of tower typically built into or adjacent to mosques. Minarets are generally used to project the Muslim call to prayer (''adhan'') from a muezzin, but they also served as landmarks and symbols of Islam's presence. They can h ...
s fall, tears of muses"). The mondegreen is caused by the singer using an uncommon declension of the word ("lip"); the more common form would be instead of . The Czech radio station has a programme called ''Hej šašo, nemáš džus?'', where listeners can send their mondegreens. The show is named after a mondegreen from the song '' Highway to Hell'', in which the lyric ''"hey Satan, payin' my dues"'' was misheard as ''"Hej šašo, nemáš džus?"'' ("Hey clown, do you have juice?").


Dutch

In Dutch, mondegreens are popularly referred to as ("Mommy applejuice"), from the
Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Michael Jackson, one of the most culturally significan ...
song '' Wanna Be Startin' Somethin''' which features the lyrics ''Mama-se mama-sa ma-ma-coo-sa'', and was once misheard as . The Dutch radio station 3FM show ''Superrradio'' (originally ''Timur Open Radio''), run by Timur Perlin and Ramon, featured an item in which listeners were encouraged to send in mondegreens under the name "". The segment was popular for years.


French

In French, the phenomenon is also known as , especially when referring to pop songs. The title of the film ("Life In Pink" literally; "Life Through Rose-Coloured Glasses" more broadly), depicting the life of Édith Piaf, can be mistaken for ("The Pink Airplane"). The title of the 1983 French novel ("Tea in the Harem of Archi Ahmed") by Mehdi Charef (and the 1985 movie of the same name) is based on the main character mishearing ("the theorem of Archimedes") in his mathematics class. A classic example in French is similar to the "Lady Mondegreen" anecdote: in his 1962 collection of children's quotes , the humorist Jean-Charles refers to a misunderstood lyric of " La Marseillaise" (the French national anthem): ("Do you hear those savage soldiers roar?") is misheard as ("that soldier Séféro").


German

Mondegreens are a well-known phenomenon in German, especially where non-German songs are concerned. They are sometimes called, after a well-known example, -songs (" I got the power", a song by Snap!, misinterpreted as a German female name). Journalist Axel Hacke published a series of books about them, beginning with ("The White Negro Wumbaba", a mishearing of the line from ""). In urban legend, children's paintings of
nativity scene In the Christian tradition, a nativity scene (also known as a manger scene, crib, crèche ( or ), or in Italian ''presepio'' or ''presepe'', or Bethlehem) is the special exhibition, particularly during the Christmastide, Christmas season, of ar ...
s, occasionally include next to the Child, Mary, Joseph, and so on, an additional, laughing creature known as the . The reason is to be found in the line ("God's Son! Oh, how does love laugh out of Thy divine mouth!") from the song "
Silent Night "Silent Night" () is a popular Christmas carol, composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO The United Nations Educati ...
". The subject is , a poetic contraction of leaving off the final and the definite article, so that the phrase might be misunderstood as being about a person named laughing "in a loveable manner". has been used as the title of at least one book about Christmas and Christmas songs.


Hebrew

Ghil'ad Zuckermann Ghil'ad Zuckermann (, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann was awarded the Rubinlicht Prize (2023) "for his researc ...
mentions the example (, which means "we must be happy", with a grammatical error) as a mondegreen of the original (, which means "wake up, brothers, with a happy heart").P. 248 in
Ghil'ad Zuckermann Ghil'ad Zuckermann (, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann was awarded the Rubinlicht Prize (2023) "for his researc ...
(2003), '' Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew''
Palgrave Macmillan
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Although this line is taken from the extremely well-known song " Háva Nagíla" ("Let's be happy"), given the Hebrew high-register of ( "wake up!"), Israelis often mishear it. An Israeli site dedicated to Hebrew mondegreens has coined the term (, Hebrew for "
watermelon The watermelon (''Citrullus lanatus'') is a species of flowering plant in the family Cucurbitaceae, that has a large, edible fruit. It is a Glossary of botanical terms#scandent, scrambling and trailing vine-like plant, and is plant breeding ...
") for "mondegreen", named for a common mishearing of Shlomo Artzi's award-winning 1970 song "Ahavtia" ("I loved her", using a form uncommon in spoken Hebrew).


Hungarian

One of the most well-known Hungarian mondegreens is connected to the 1984 song " Live Is Life" by the Austrian band Opus. The gibberish ''labadab dab dab'' phrase in the song was commonly misunderstood by Hungarians as ''levelet kaptam'' (Hungarian for "I have received mail"), which was later immortalized by the cult movie '' Moscow Square'' depicting the life of teenagers in the late 1980s.


Indonesian

The word "mendengarku" ("hear me") in Ghea Indrawari's song, "Teramini", is misheard as "mantan aku" ("my ex") or "makananku" ("my food").


Japanese

Caramelldansen, a Swedish song which gained popularity in Japan during the early 21st century, contains the lyric "''Dansa med oss, klappa era händer''" (''"Dance with us, clap your hands"''), which was sometimes misinterpreted as "バルサミコ酢やっぱいらへんで" (''"barusamiko-su yappa irahen de"''), which translates to "I don't want any
balsamic vinegar Balsamic vinegar () is a dark, concentrated, intensely flavoured vinegar made wholly or partially from Must, grape must: freshly crushed grape juice with all the skins, seeds, and stems. Etymology The Italian language, Italian word (from Lat ...
after all". This was then included in the official Japanese translation of the song.


Polish

A paper in
phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...
cites memoirs of the poet Antoni Słonimski, who confessed that in the recited poem '' Konrad Wallenrod'' he used to hear ''zwierz Alpuhary'' ("a beast of Alpujarras") rather than ''z wież Alpuhary'' ("from the towers of Alpujarras").


Russian

In 1875
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian literature, Russian and world literature, and many of his works are consider ...
cited a line from Fyodor Glinka's song "Troika" (1825), колокольчик, дар Валдая ("the bell, gift of Valday"), stating that it is usually understood as колокольчик, дарвалдая ("the bell ''darvaldaying''"—supposedly an
onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...
of ringing sounds).Достоевский Ф. М. Полное собрание сочинений: В 30 тт. Л., 1980. Т. 21. С. 264.


Slovak

In Slovakia, the lyrics ''God found good people staying for brother'' from the song ''Survive'' by Laurent Wolf and Andrew Roachford was often misheard as ("Zdeno from
Poprad Poprad (; ; ) is a city in northern Slovakia at the foot of the High Tatras, High Tatra Mountains, famous for its picturesque historic centre and as a holiday resort. The largest town of the Spiš region and the largest of all towns in the vic ...
bought the Kaufland"). The mondegreen became so popular that a radio station, ''Fun rádio'', created a broadcast called ("Hits of Zdeno from Poprad") where listeners can send mondegreens and overheard lyrics.


Spanish

The
Mexican national anthem The "Mexican National Anthem", also known by its incipit "Mexicans, at the Cry of War", is the official national anthem of the United Mexican States. Its lyrics, composed by poet Francisco González Bocanegra after a Federal contest in 1853, ...
contains the verse ("If, however, a foreign enemy would dare") using and , archaic poetic forms. Thus, the verse has sometimes been misunderstood as ("Masiosare, a strange enemy") with , an otherwise unused word, as the name of the enemy. " Masiosare" has been used in Mexico as a first name for real and fictional people and as a common name ( or the homophone ) for the anthem itself or for a threat against the country.


Yiddish

The expression (bobe-mayse, "grandmother's tale") was originally a misunderstanding of (bovo-mayse, "Bovo story"), a story from the Bovo-Bukh.


See also

* Eggcorn * Mumpsimus * '' Soramimi'' – Japanese version of the mondegreen * Am I Right – website with a large collection of misheard lyrics * Bennie and the Jets * Bushism *
Folk etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...
* Mad Gab *
Pareidolia Pareidolia (; ) is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus (physiology), stimulus, usually visual, so that one detects an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. Pareidolia is a specific bu ...
*
Parody music Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or copying existing (usually well known) musical ideas, and/or lyrics, or copying the particular style of a composer or performer, or even a general style of music. In music, parody has been us ...
* Yanny or Laurel


Notes and references


Explanatory notes


Citations


Further reading

* Connor, Steven
''Earslips: Of Mishearings and Mondegreens''
, 2009. * Maria Konnikova. ''Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy'', 2014
Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy
* Edwards, Gavin. ''Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy'', 1995. * Edwards, Gavin. ''When a Man Loves a Walnut'', 1997. * Edwards, Gavin. ''He's Got the Whole World in His Pants'', 1996. * Edwards, Gavin. ''Deck the Halls with Buddy Holly'', 1998. * Gwynne, Fred. ''Chocolate Moose for Dinner'', 1988. * Norman, Philip. ''Your Walrus Hurt the One You Love: Malapropisms, Mispronunciations, and Linguistic Cock-ups'', 1988. .


External links

*
Snopes.com ''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source ...
:
The Lady and the Mondegreen
(misheard Christmas songs). * Pamela Licalzi O'Connell:

{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170218062937/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/09/technology/sweet-slips-of-the-ear-mondegreens.html , date=18 February 2017 ", ''The New York Times'', 9 April 1998. 1950s neologisms Humour Phonology Psychoacoustics Semantics