Mondegreens

Coined 1954

Wordplay — the misheard line

Misheard words in a song or a poem, reinterpreted into something that makes a sort of sense. The name was invented by the American writer Sylvia Wright in Harper's Magazine in November 1954: as a child she had heard the Scottish ballad of the Bonnie Earl o' Moray end with the slaying of the earl "and Lady Mondegreen", where the real line runs "and laid him on the green". She mourned the imaginary lady for years. The phenomenon is universal, and Japanese has its own word for it, soramimi, meaning "empty ear".

How to spot them

▸A Scottish ballad, an imaginary murdered noblewoman, and Harper's Magazine in 1954
▸Jimi Hendrix and the kiss allegedly bestowed on a passing gentleman
▸Children's versions: Round John Virgin, and a cross-eyed bear called Gladly
▸The Japanese call it soramimi; the near neighbour is the eggcorn

Key facts

Sylvia Wright's essay in Harper's Magazine of November 1954, mourning a noblewoman who never existed (1954)

'The Death of Lady Mondegreen'

The line 'they hae slain the Earl o' Moray and laid him on the green', heard as naming a second victim

The Bonnie Earl o' Moray, Child ballad 181, on the murder of James Stewart in 1592

Jimi Hendrix's line about kissing the sky, heard instead as a kiss for a passing man (1967)

'Purple Haze'; Hendrix is said to have played up to the misheard version on stage

Creedence Clearwater Revival's bad moon on the rise, heard as a bathroom on the right (1969)

'Bad Moon Rising'; John Fogerty has sung the misheard line himself in concert

Carols produce Round John Virgin, and hymns a cross-eyed bear called Gladly

From 'round yon virgin' and 'gladly the cross I'd bear'

Elton John's 'Tiny Dancer', reheard as an instruction involving a television actor (1971)

'Hold me closer, Tony Danza' — the best-known modern example

The Japanese word for the same thing translates as 'empty ear'

Soramimi, which in Japan became a whole genre of comedy television

Admitted to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in 2008 (2008)

It had entered the Random House dictionary in 2000

Key ideas

Hearing is an act of guesswork. The brain segments a continuous stream of sound into words using expectation as much as acoustics, so where the input is unclear it supplies whatever is plausible — and a plausible wrong answer feels exactly as certain as a right one.

Quick-fire facts

•Sylvia Wright (1917–1981) coined the word in Harper's Magazine in November 1954
•She was the daughter of Austin Tappan Wright, author of the utopian novel Islandia
•The ballad is 'The Bonnie Earl o' Moray', Child ballad 181, about the killing of James Stewart, Earl of Moray, in 1592
•The true line is 'and laid him on the green'
•The word entered Random House's dictionary in 2000 and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate in 2008
•An eggcorn is the related error in ordinary speech — 'eggcorn' for acorn, 'damp squid' for damp squib; the term was coined on Language Log by Geoffrey Pullum in 2003
•A malapropism differs in that the speaker, not the hearer, gets it wrong
•Soramimi in Japanese means 'empty ear' and became the basis of a long-running comedy television segment
•'José can you see' for 'O say can you see' is the standard American example, from the Star-Spangled Banner
•An oronym is a phrase that genuinely sounds identical to another — 'ice cream' and 'I scream'

Drill it — 7 cards

1 / 7new card

Sources

Sylvia Wright — The Death of Lady Mondegreen
David Crystal — Language Play