What is the origin of the word "mondegreen"?

Answers from ETNIers

noa lev noalev@mcc.org.il

I'm glad you asked that. A mondegreen is a lyric which is heard incorrectly.

For example, the title of this page - "The Ants Are My Friends" - is a mondegreen for "the answer, my friends, is blowin' in the wind." The word "mondegreen" was coined by Sylvia Wright, who wrote a column about them in the fifties, when she recounted hearing a Scottish folk song, "The Bonny Earl Of Morray." She heard the lyric, "Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray and laid him on the green" as "Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray and Lady Mondegreen."
i found this :www.thechicagoloop.net/lyrics

Third, "all he left us was a loan" (as opposed to "all he left us was alone") is an absolutely real mondegreen under the strictest definition. Additionally, that is not the only way the line has been mondegreened. "All he left us was a phone" has been reported in the Midwest, and the bewildering "All he left us was along" was prevalent along the East Coast.
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/carroll/mondegreens.shtml

Q: Is there a technical name for these mishearances?
A: Well, not a technical name as in psychology terminology, but there is an anecdotal name -- they're called mondegreens, and it's all explained at the Web's other archive of misheard lyrics, The Ants Are My Friends.
http://www.kissthisguy.com/

MIND THE GREENS!
Creative mishearings of lyrics
A little while ago, the British newspaper the Guardian began a series in its Weekend supplement on Saturdays called "Come Again", recounting the strange misunderstandings which occur when we don't quite catch the words of a song lyric, a station announcement or other indistinct bit of language. That wonderful pattern-matching ability I've mentioned elsewhere comes into being and forces us to turn garble into sense, any sense, even if it's nonsense. I first came across the canonical example of such misunderstandings at university many years ago, when a friend showed me her teddy-bear. Old and faded, with one ear gone and his fur worn down to the nap, he was past his best but obviously still a cherished object. "I call him Gladly," she said. Seeing my blank look, she explained patiently, "You know, as in 'Gladly, the cross-eyed bear'". It took a few moments for the penny to drop. In the years since, I've come across a couple of others - the story about the small child saying his prayers: "Our Father, which art in Heaven. Harold be thy name" and a creative version of a once-popular Beatles song, "The girl with colitis goes by." And I was recently reminded of a popular song current in my youth (the early fifties) entitled Shrimp Boats, which had the line "The shrimp boats are a-coming". The next line, I have only just discovered, was "Their sails are in sight" but my juvenile concentration on the basics of life rendered it as "They'll be frying tonight", and this is the version that has stayed with me for more than forty years.
It was only a little while ago, when a query came into the Usenet group alt.usage.english, that I discovered not only that these felicitous mishearings are sought out and treasured by lots of people, but that they have a name: mondegreens. As a semi-professional collector of words, this set me off on a trail that seems to be inexhaustible. I discovered that the name was coined by Sylvia Wright, in an article called "The Death of Lady Mondegreen", in Harper's Magazine in 1954. It appears she had as a child misheard the last line of a famous old Scottish ballad called "The Bonny Earl of Murray" and thought it went:
www.worldwidewords.org

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Devorah Beth dvora@amiad.org.il

Although I could not find this term in any of the number of Dictionaries I possess, it was the easiest challenge to find (so far), on the Net! 1. A mondegreen is a lyric which is heard incorrectly.
For example, the title of the explanation of monde green:
"The Ants Are My Friends" - is a mondegreen for "the answer, my friends, is blowin' in the wind." The word "mondegreen" was coined by Sylvia Wright, who wrote a column about them in the fifties, when she recounted hearing a Scottish folk song, "The Bonny Earl Of Morray." She heard the lyric, "Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray and laid him on the green" as "Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray and Lady Mondegreen."
Arguably, the most famous mondegreen of all time is Jimi Hendrix' "'scuse me while I kiss this guy" for "'scuse me while I kiss the sky".
Source: Trivia.Mailer@mailbits.com
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=MONDEGREEN
Examples people have sent in are numerous. Here are some listed Under B:
(many are from the Beatles)
1.she was a state trooper!
One way ticket, yeah!
she was a day-tripper. . .
(from Day Tripper )

2...picked up her eyes in the church
picked up the rice in the church

3....darling, he sucks in the night when there's nobody there
darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
(from Eleanor Rigby)

4. ...I imagine she's a pretty nice girl
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl

5.... here comes the sun, and I say, it's sunrise
... and I say, it's all right
(Here Comes the Sun)

2. A Mondegreen is something which happened to us when we misheard Hebrew songs sung lustily in our Youth Movement days. Sometimes we deliberately altered the words such as in:
Artza Aliynu
Ezeh Shtut Asinu
But this is what I found and abbreviated:

MIND THE GREENS! (Source: Askjeeves)
"A little while ago, the British newspaper the Guardian began a series in its Weekend supplement on Saturdays called "Come Again", recounting the strange misunderstandings which occur when we don't quite catch the words of a song lyric, a station announcement or other indistinct bit of language.
That wonderful pattern-matching ability I've mentioned elsewhere comes into being and forces us to turn garble into sense, any sense, even if it's nonsense….
. In the years since, I've come across a couple of others - the story about the small child saying his prayers: "Our Father, which art in Heaven.
Harold be thy name".
It was only a little while ago, when a query came into the Usenet group
alt.usage.english, that I discovered not only that these felicitous mishearings are sought out and treasured by lots of people, but that they have a name: mondegreens. …
I discovered that the name was coined by Sylvia Wright, in an article called "The Death of Lady Mondegreen", in Harper's Magazine in 1954. It appears she had as a child misheard the last line of a famous old Scottish ballad called "The Bonny Earl of Murray" and thought it went:
"Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands,
O where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl of Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen."
"How romantic to have them both die together," she thought, and was bitterly disappointed when the last line turned out to be the much more prosaic:
"And hae laid him on the green".
However, she turned her disappointment to our benefit by changing her elegant-sounding mistake into a truly aristocratic name for the whole class of aural misinterpretations. It hasn't made many dictionaries yet, but the columnist Jon Carroll is waging a single-handed battle through his articles in the San Francisco Chronicle to get the name more widely recognized….
Here are a few examples from the column in The Guardian:
· 1. A dismal-sounding Irish travel firm: "Grey Day Holidays" (heard on radio there by Bob Neish from Boston, who was quite relieved to discover the firm was really "Grade A Holidays").
2. Boney M seemed to be singing "How can you sing the Lord's song in Australia?", rather than "... in a strange land". (Archie Moore).
3. Caught in passing, the end of a piece on a BBC radio discussion programme: "Masturbate immediately!" (Simon Cuff avidly waited for the repeat but discovered that all the MP Harriet Harman had actually said was:
"This is an issue the Labour Party must debate immediately.").
Many people would argue that most of the mishearings in the Guardian column are not in fact mondegreens. They limit that word to an accidental mishearing of the words of a song…
If you'd like to explore further, here are some places to look:
Gavin Edwards wrote a book entitled "'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy, and other Misheard Lyrics", published by Fireside in 1995.
William Safire discusses mondegreens in his book "On Language", published by Times Books in 1980 (ISBN 0 8129 0937 2).
Happy mondegreening
I did not notice the name of the writer of this article, sorry, but it is too late to look now

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C. Covo-Farchi ccf@bbsofts.com

Well, you won't believe it, but this morning there were two messages in my mailbox, one from *etni* asking about the origin of the word "mondegreen", and another one entitled MONDEGREEN: Your word of the day from www.yourdictionary.com
What a coincidence! Now this is no fun because I didn't even have to look it up.
So here goes:

"Today's Word: Mondegreen (Noun)
Pronunciation: ['mahn·d?·green]

Definition 1: A structural reanalysis of a word or phrase that results in a different interpretation, as the child's mistaking the song, "Gladly, the cross I'd bear" as one about "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear."

Usage 1: Not yet recognised by the OED, or Websters. Most of the over 3500 instances found on Internet searches seem to be explanations of the word, not unself-conscious uses--raising the question of whether 'mondegreen' is yet really an English word. Many people seem not to have yet heard it, though everyone immediately grasps what it means (or would mean, were it to become a word).

Suggested Usage: "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" is from the Jimi Hendrix song "Purple Haze". Mr Hendrix was himself aware that he had been mondegreened, and would occasionally, in performance, actually kiss a guy after singing that line. (Jon Carroll) Thinking that "the die is cast" was about putting hot metal into a mold rather than throwing one of a pair of dice was my childhood misunderstanding, not exactly a mondegreen but close.

Etymology: The fourth line of the 17th century Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" (http://www.bartleby.com/101/386.html) which goes, "(They hae slain the Earl of Murray) And hae laid him on the green." Sylvia Wright's article "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," Harper's 1954, describes her misconstrual of the line as "the Lady Mondegreen." Popularised by William Safire's 1981 book 'On Language', and by Jon Carroll, a San Francisco columnist.

--David Nash, Australian National University

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Josie Kinchin josie@netvision.net.il

A mondegreen is a series of words or a phrase that is misheard in song lyric.
Where does it come from? Someone called Lady Mondegreen who misinterpreted a line from a song called "The Bonny Earl of Murray" and the line became "(hae laid) him on the green "
Although it usually refers to song lyrics, sometimes a misheard statement is also called mondegreen. One popular statement from WWII (I think) was the famous telegram which interpreted as:
"Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance"
(three and fourpence being "old" money in England!)
However it should have read:
"Send reinforcements, we're going to advance"

Play Chinese Whispers with your students and you will get some wonderful ones. Or just listen to them singing the lyrics of English pop songs.
The misinterpretations that occur there can be side-splitting!

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