Mondegreens

During the lonely summer months when network television has abandoned me, I search for anything to tide me over.

I play video games, watch reruns of What I Like About You, Gilmore Girls and Star Trek: TNG, and I desperately search for something new (some good, and some bad).

This led me to the discovery that my TiVo is quite capable of showing me YouTube videos on my giant television.  Although YouTube is hardly a new invention, I have never really embraced the phenomenon.  I can always find better things to do on my computer than watch videos.

But watching videos on my television?  Well that’s an entirely different beast.  So I embarked and soon found myself subscribed to Marina Orlova, host and proprietor of HotForWords.

The premise of her website and videos are simple — discussion of the origin of certain words, what they mean, and what they used to mean.

Marina is a philologist by trade so she’s not just some fly-by-night internet researcher.  Her love for words makes her ’students’ hot for words, and there is no better motivator for learning.

Sure it doesn’t hurt that she has a sexy Russian accent and looks like a super model, but it’s really the content that got me to to subscribe.  Learning is fun, and learning in bite-sized chunks is even better.

That long introduction of HotForWords was really to get to a discussion about one of Marina’s latest videos:

This video discusses the meaning and origin of the word mondegreen. It is a word I believe I have come across before but I don’t think I could have told you the meaning before watching this video.

For those unwilling to watch the hot Russian girl above (seriously, what is wrong with you!?), a mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a lyric.

I can’t remember all of the mondegreens I have come across in my life, but I know they are plentiful. From my youth, I can particularly remember mishearing a line in “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.

The real line goes, “Bright young women, sick of swimming, ready to stand!” but I always heard it as “Pregnant women, sick of swimming, ready to stand!”

I always just assumed it was some sort of reference to Ariel’s unspoken desire to be a mother.

From the video, I have definitely been guilty of “Hold me closer Tony Danza.” I think the first time I heard Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”, I had no idea what he was saying.  Given his preferences, I figured it was perfectly plausible that he had written an ode to Tony Danza.

What are some mondegreens that you’ve been guilty of? With all of the singing of pirate songs and rock concerts you people go to, surely you’ve run into a few.