"Olive the Other Reindeer?" "Scuse me, while I kiss this guy?"
While (ahem!) researching the lyrics to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I found out that those misheard lyrics and similar auditory misconceptions are called "mondegreens." According to the Word (aka Wikipedia),
Quote:
The American writer Sylvia Wright coined it in an essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen", which was published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.[1] She wrote:
When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques. One of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray, [sic]
And Lady Mondegreen.
The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green", . . . other examples of what she says, "I shall hereafter call mondegreens," such as:
Surely/Shirley, 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")
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well, at least I got a new word out of it!