What are some of your favorite "mondegreens"?
Asked by
janbb (
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March 20th, 2015
A mondegreen is a word or a phrase misheard and misinterpreted from a song or saying. “Gladly, the cross-eyed bear” is a famous one. Today I finally heard some lyrics correctly. I always thought the line from “Under the Boardwalk” was “And the sand was so hot you wish your tired feet would file through.” Today I finally heard that it’s “you wish your tired feet were fire proof!” Makes much more sense. What have you misheard?
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15 Answers
When my daughter and one of her friends were about 5 years old they were in the back of the car as I drove along, the stereo was playing Don’t Take Away My Heaven by Aaron Neville. The girls were singing “don’t take away my feather”, it is something I remember fondly.
“Freak out in the garden, and you may find a friend” was my major misinterpretation of this song…
My brother heard Creedence singing, “There’s a bathroom on the right.”
@janbb: That’s my new mantra… :-/
“Two maggots were fighting in dead Ernest.”
Response moderated (Personal Attack)
Don’t chew on me, BABY! Don’t chew on me, OOOH!
At an old office job, I once overheard one employee say to another that she posted some cutesy illustration with a trite saying in her cube, you know, “just for chagrins.”
When I was a kid, I thought the BeeGees “Stayin’ Alive” was “Diggity Light.”
“You and I must make a pact, we must bring starvation back…”
When my son was young we watched Excalibur. At some point a few days later he was asking me about it and he was certain that the scene where the knights are riding through the falling blossoms (starting about 0:40) that plays O Fortuna from Carmina Burana that they were saying “Go! Go! King go!”
Peter Paul and Mary
“The ants are my friends, blowin’ in the wind”
Michael Jackson—Billie Jean
“The chair is not my son”
It looks strange when reading it, but when you hear him singing it, that’s exactly what it sounds like.
I used to think that the lyrics to The Boxer included the words “a pocket full of mumbo sunshelled promises”
All lies and jest, still, a man hears what he wants to hear, eh?
The actual words are as follows:
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles,
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/paulsimon/theboxer.html
I always wondered exactly what sunshell promises were, but since it sounded poetic and beautiful I didn’t stress over it, just enjoyed the image.
Funny how he (Paul Simon that is) says a man hears what he wants to hear. How apropos.
^^never understood that line either.
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