Mondegreen: A New Word for Secret Shame

Mondegreen: It’s Merriam-Webster’s new entry for your secret shame. The shame that proves to all within hearing that you are not so hip after all as you belt out the lyrics to “Smells like teen spirit” as “Here we are now in containers…”. Or maybe everyone stops singing just in time to hear you butcher Credence Clearwater’s “There’s a bad moon on the rise” to “There’s a bathroom on the right”.

The ultimate mondegreen was The Kingsmen’s version of “Louie, Louie” which an entire entire generation heard wrong but then passed the “dirty” lyrics on to a friend or two until absolutely no one believed it was a simple song about a lonely sailor at sea.

So your sitting in the back seat and your teenage kids are driving and Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” comes on the radio. You really start belting it out. You’ll show them whose still hip after all these years. Of course they don’t know all the words which makes it that much easier to hear your old senile brain crank out, “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy” instead of “kiss the sky”. It will be a while before they let you live that one down.

The word mondegreen was among tens of thousands of words whose use the dictionary observed for decades. The word was first seen in print in 1954. It originated from the mishearing of the Scottish ballad lyric “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen”. The word was coined by writer Sylvia Wright in the 1950’s to describe her childhood misreading of the old Scottish folk song.

While browsing through some websites of commonly mangled song lyrics I had hoped to solve some old Bob Dylan mysteries but no such luck. But as one writer wrote Mondegreen would be a great title for his next boxed set.

Many of us wouldn’t tell our closest significant other or our spouse some of our more famous misheard song lyrics. You might be judged by what you mishear. “Any misheard lyric is an impromptu Rorschach test” writes Gavin Edwards, who has collected misheard lyrics in volumes with titles like “He’s Got The Whole World in His Pants”.

See if you can guess the widely misheard song lyrics as they are meant to be:

• “Hold me closer, Tony Danza.”.
• “The smell of fat chicks just puts a smile on my face.”
• “Wrapped up like a douche”
• “The girl with colitis goes by.”

Answers:

• Elton John, “Hold me closer, tiny dancer.”
• David Bowie, “This mellow-thighed chick just put my spine out of place.” (Suffragette City)
• Bruce Springsteen, “Cut loose like a deuce another runner in the night (Blinded by the Night)
• Beatles, “The girl with kaleidoscope eyes,”

Other words and phrases that finally made it to Webster’s: Mental health day–so why not celebrate by taking one, and wing nut (circa 1900) (slang) “one who advocates extremes measures or changes; radical.