Michelle Malkin » What’s your favorite mondegreen?

What’s your favorite mondegreen?

By Michelle Malkin • July 7, 2008 11:14 PM

Merriam-Webster’s holding a contest for the best “mondegreen.” What’s a mondegreen? Here:

The 2008 update of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition features a fresh crop of new words and phrases that have successfully become part of the mainstream English language through prolonged and widespread usage in a variety of publications. One of these new entries, mondegreen (”a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung”) has delighted wordplay aficionados for years. Mondegreen was first coined by author Sylvia Wright in 1954 in Atlantic magazine, when she confessed to a childhood misinterpretation of the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Moray.” When she first heard the lyric “they had slain the Earl of Moray and had laid him on the green,” she felt terribly sorry for the “poor Lady Mondegreen.”

A few more examples:

The ants are my friends = the answer my friend/is blowin’ in the wind
Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind”

There’s a bathroom on the right = there’s a bad moon on the rise
Credence Clearwater Revival, “Bad Moon Rising”

Hold me closer, Tony Danza = hold me closer, tiny dancer
Elton John, “Tiny Dancer”

I like “Lucy in the sky with Linus.”

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#370566

On July 8th, 2008 at 6:19 pm, shimauma2 said:

My hubby likes to revamp the lyrics to Sting’s “Fields of Gold”, when it comes to the line “Fields of barley” he’ll sing “fields of holly” which doesn’t make sense as holly grows in trees and is very prickly, you wouldn’t want to be laying down with your lover in fields of holly…I mean OUCHIES!!

TEEEEEJ
#370591

On July 8th, 2008 at 6:43 pm, MikeOK said:

29victor,

The Joe Cocker video was priceless.

“Probiotics changed the way I live”

Priceless.
#370858

On July 9th, 2008 at 2:39 am, frontierguy said:

I know I’m late, been busy and working nights. But, for the longest time I thought the chorus for Spiderwebs by No Doubt went like this:

And its all your fault
I scream my balls off
No matter whose fault
I gotta scream my balls off

It is really something about screen phone calls. Don’t know why I got balls off and phone calls mixed up.

I just thought gwen stefani must think she has some big balls.
#371041

On July 9th, 2008 at 9:58 am, johndlong said:

The earliest I remember and still my favorite is that Disco favorite “Tuna hot Dog” (Do The Hustle.) My sister’s best friend’s little brother used to run around the house singing “Tuna Hot Dog” whenever it came on the radio. I still laugh out loud imagining Jimmy singing this thirty years later.

~~JD~~
#423100

On August 27th, 2008 at 1:32 am, wooga said:

Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party”

They say “leave your body and soul at the door.” Sounds like “leave your body a**hole, at the door.