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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/action/view/entry_id/907883
Rated: E · Book · Educational · #2105953
One hundred facts that are interesting but ultimately useless.
#907883 added March 29, 2017 at 4:00pm
Restrictions: None
Mondegreens
Mondegreens
- linguistics -

A "mondegreen" is a linguistic phenomenon mainly associated with songs or spoken poetry. Coined by American author Sylvia Wright, the effect relies on a listener mishearing a line of a poem or a song lyric -- often due to garbling or other poor sound quality -- and then replacing the words with a reasonable alternative.

Wright credits a Scottish ballad for the term, the first stanza of which ends with:


"They hae slain the Earl o' Moray,
And laid him on the green."


As a child, though, Wright misunderstood the lines to read:


"They hae slain the Earl o' Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen."


Perhaps a more famous example is the Iron Butterfly song "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", whose title is a mondegreen for the originally intended title, "In The Garden of Eden".


#088


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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/action/view/entry_id/907883