736: egg corns and mondegreens Dec 13, 2016

There are a great number of ways in which it is possible to misinterpret what someone has said. Of course, it is possible to hear nonsense, but common misconceptions about words and phrases like 'bated-breath, 'lip singing' or 'old-timer's disease' instead of 'baited-breath', 'lip-syncing' and 'Alzheimer's disease' respectively that still retain some sense of the original word in a fairly logical way have a specific name, egg corns, or more technically, oronyms. There are also, 'mondegreens' which involve the misunderstanding or lyrics or other text, and can usually also make sense within the context. Both of these words are examples of what they represent: 'egg corn' comes from a mishearing of 'acorn' and 'mondegreen' is coined based off of someone hearing the end of Percy's Reliques, "...They hae slain the Earl o' Moray, and Lady Mondegreen' instead of '...and laid him on the green'.