PASSIONATE RATIONS

I learned a new word yesterday. It’s a great word.

Are you ready for it?

With thanks to Oxford University Press and the daily usage tips of legal-writing guru, Bryan Garner, the word is:

Mondegreen (1).
A mondegreen is a misheard lyric, saying, catchphrase, or slogan. The word was coined by the Scottish writer Sylvia Wright in a 1954 article in Harper’s Magazine. There she wrote that, as a child, she had misinterpreted the lyrics of a Scottish ballad called “The Bonny Earl of Moray.” One of the lines in the song is this: “They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray and laid him on the green.” She had thought it went, “They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray and Lady Mondegreen.”

As Bryan Garner points out, many mondegreens are essentially children’s misinterpretations: “Consider the examples just from the Christmas season. A child sings ‘Silent Night’ in this way: ‘Holy imbecile, tender and mild.’ Of course, the actual words are ‘Holy infant, so tender and mild.’ In the same song, ‘Christ the sailor is born’ is a mangled version of ‘Christ, the Savior, is born.’ And ’round yon Virgin’ can mistakenly become ’round John Virgin.’ In ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,’ some have interpreted the true love’s gift of the first day as being ‘a part-red gingerbread tree’ instead of ‘a partridge in a pear tree.’ And in ‘Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,’ some have thought that there’s a tenth reindeer: ‘Olive, the other reindeer’ (for ‘All of the other reindeer’).

“Many mondegreens occur in transcribed speech. A secretary or court reporter doesn’t quite hear the words and comes up with a plausible guess. ‘Attorney and notary public’ becomes ‘attorney and not a republic.’ ‘County surveyor’ becomes ‘Countess of Ayr.’”

My favorite: “Juxtaposition” becomes “jock strap position.”

This phenomenon seems like a great basis for a web page, but of course that’s been done already. Go here.