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A mondegreen (/ ˈ m ɒ n d ɪ ˌ ɡ r iː n / ⓘ) is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. [1] Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense.
The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term "mondegreen" in an essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen", which was published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954. [7]In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the final two lines of the above verse as "they have slain the Earl o' Moray, and Lady Mondegreen."
A mondegreen is a misinterpretation of a word or phrase, often within the lyrics of a specific song or other type of performance, and need not make sense within that context. [22] An eggcorn must still retain something of the original meaning, [ 22 ] as the speaker understands it, and may be a replacement for a poorly understood phrase rather ...
Etymology: the name Lady Mondegreen, a misinterpretation of the phrase laid him on the green in the ballad ‘The Bonny Earl of Murray’; coined by S. Wright (see quot. 1954), who introduces the misinterpreted phrase as follows:
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The surname is based on Lady Mondegreen, a character of myth and legend. Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, periodically runs a story which gives the truth about "Mondegreen". A mondegreen is a mishearing of the lyrics of popular songs. The name itself comes from Carroll's mishearing of a line in a song from his youth ...
A common mondegreen in the song is the perception that, following the title line, Lynne shouts "Bruce!" In the liner notes of the ELO compilation Flashback and elsewhere, Lynne has explained that he is singing a made-up word, "Groos", which some have suggested sounds like the German expression "Gruß", meaning "greeting."
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