Eggcorns and Mondegreens
Eggcorns derive from confused homophones in set phrases. Homophones are words that sound similar or the same to other words but have different meanings. For example, the word bizarre, meaning odd or eccentric, can be mispelt as bazaar meaning a market in the Middle East because they sound almost identical. Numerous homophones exist in English, including accept / except; capital / capitol; discrete / discreet; review / revue; and yoke / yolk. In a Whitehouse tweet from 2017, the final pair were confused: “those suffering under the yolk of authoritarianism,” and a flurry of puns about eggs ensued in the retweets (Einsohn: 149).
Misuse of homophones in writing set phrases is so prevalent that the linguist Geoffrey Pullum has given them a name: eggcorns, derived from the comical “Mighty oaks from little eggcorns (acorns) grow.” Examples of eggcorns include change tact instead of change tack; hone in on instead of home in on; pass mustard instead of pass muster; and straightlaced instead of straitlaced. One particular eggcorn chaise lounge (chaise longue) is now considered an American English variant in OED and is listed separately in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate. However, the eminent lexicographer and grammarian Bryan Garner regards the variant as ‘distinctly low rent’ (Garner: 157).
A subset of eggcorns contain the missheard lyric, saying, catchphrase, or slogan. These are known as mondegreens (listed in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate but not in the OED). ‘Mondegreen’ is a word coined by the writer Sylvia Wright in a 1954 article for Harper’s Magazine. She recalled a line from a Scottish folk song, “The Bonny Earl of Moray,” which goes “They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray and laid him on the green” and she as a child misheard: “They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray and Lady Mondegreen.”
Bryan Garner at 603 points out that many mondegreens are essentially childhood misinterpretations of songs, often Christmas songs. Here are a few of the examples he cites: ‘Bells on cocktails ring, making spare ribs bright’ in ‘Jingle Bells’; ‘Olive the other reindeer’ from ‘Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer’; and ‘a part-red gingerbread tree’ from ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. Mondegreens also occur in transcribed speech, for example, when a secretary or court reporter doesn’t quite hear what was said and instead comes up with a plausible alternative: ‘Attorney and notary public’ becomes ‘attorney and not a republic’ (Garner: ibid).
But the most interesting lexis for mondegreens is found in song lyrics. We all know them. Paul Young sings, “Every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you” (every time you go away, you take a piece of me with you); Crystal Gayle sings, “Donuts make my brown eyes blue” (Don’t it make my brown eyes blue); The Beatles sing, “Livin’ is easy with nice clothes” (Livin’ is easy with eyes closed). Often the misinterpretations occur because the lyrics are sung without clear diction so the listener has to guess. Sometimes the reinterpretation is as good as the original.
Many websites and YouTube channels attend to mondegreens, so it’s easy to find examples of them. Although I suspect many of them are fabricated in an attempt at humour. Jimi Hendrix in Purple Haze singing the line: “’scuse me while I kiss this guy”? Really?
Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern English Usage (2016).