Slips of the Ear: Homonyms, Oronyms, Homographs, and Mondegreens

 Zoë Sharp

I like unintentional humour, and a good deal of amusement can be had from slips of the ear—words misheard, misinterpreted, or simply misunderstood. I’d no idea, though, until I started looking into the subject, how many different words there were to describe this phenomenon, so I thought I’d share some trivia with you.

Homonyms

First up is a Homonym, which is when two or more words have the same sound or spelling, but differ in meaning, from the Greek ‘same name’.

A nice example comes from ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND:

 

“Mine is a long and sad tale!” said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.

 

“It is a long tail, certainly,”’ said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; “but why do you call it sad?”

Homonyms are closely related to Homographs and Homophones.

A Homograph is one word that is spelled exactly the same as another, but which not only has a different meaning, but often a different derivation as well. A Homograph can also be a Hetronym, from the Greek ‘other named’. A good example is the word ‘sewer’, meaning both a place for sewage, and someone who sews. The derivation of the former is from the Latin, meaning related to water, but the derivation of the latter is from the Sanskrit meaning thread or string.

 

Occasionally, Homographs are spelled identically, but pronounced differently according to the meaning, hence:

 

“When I tear my fingernail, I shed a tear.”

Whereas Homophones are two words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings. Such as:

 

“I shed a tear as I watched him climb onto the top tier of the podium.”

 

Although, come to think of it, both Homographs and Homophones could fall into the overall category of Homonyms.

 

Confused? Stick around.

Oronyms

Then we get to Oronyms, which is apparently a word invented by Gyles Brandreth, and quite frankly I wouldn’t put it past him. An Oronym is a sequence of words that sound the same as another, with endless comic possibilities. The brain hears speech not as individual words but as an overall flow which it has to try to interpret, and what with accents and mispronunciation and slang, it’s hardly surprising that occasionally we get it wrong.

 

“The stuffy nose can lead to problems.”

“The stuff he knows can lead to problems.”

 

Actually, one of the best examples I can give of Oronyms at work is the Macho Grande courtroom scene in Airplane II: The Sequel movie:

Cause for confusion

 

Then there are simply many words that are easily confused, and among the most common are:

 

Accept – to receive or take in

Except – other than

 

Lead – metal

Led – past tense of to lead someone or something in a given direction

 

Rein – means of controlling a horse

Reign – the rule of a monarch

 

Principal – the head of a school, person being protected by a bodyguard

Principle – a rule or guideline

 

Throne – a ceremonial chair of a monarch, bishop, or similar

Thrown – propel with force through the air by movement of the hand and arm

Mondegreens

When it comes to song lyrics, the human ear has even more fun and misinterpreting words. The mishearing of words in a song is so common that American writer Sylvia Wright coined a term for it taken directly from her own experiences when as a child she misheard the words of the ballad ‘The Bonny Earl O’Moray’:

 

“Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O’Moray

And Lady Mondegreen”

 

The last line should actually have been ‘And laid him on the green’ but for years Ms Wright believed that the unknown Lady Mondegreen had met a similar fate as the Earl O’Moray and came up with the name Mondegreen to describe it.

 

Since then, of course, the practice has been rife, with one of my childhood favourites being the Kenny Rogers song, ‘You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille’. For years I heard this as:

 

“You picked a fine time to leave me, loose heel.

Four hundred children and a croc in the fields”

 

The Jimi Hendrix song, ‘Purple Haze’ contains the line:

 

“Excuse me while I kiss this guy”

 

So many people thought this was the genuine line, that he actually sang the alternative version in concert.

 

And, of course, who can forget The Eurythmics’:

 

“Sweet dreams are made of cheese”

 

I recall a friend telling me about the visually impaired ursine she heard about in church:

 

“Gladly, the cross-eyed bear”

 

And another mentioning that her mum used to swear there was a line in ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ by The Beatles, that went:

 

“The girl with colitis goes by”

 

Or that other classic by The Beatles:

 

“She’s got a chicken to ride”

 

But I think my favourite in recent years has to be the modified lyrics to the Bond theme, ‘Skyfall’. Let’s have a rousing chorus of:

 

“Make a tri-fle, make a crum-ble

Build my cake tall

And we’ll eat it all together…”

All it needs is cake. Now, doesn’t that make you feel better? So, what are your favourite examples of any of the above? Let’s hear ’em!

 

No Word of the Week this week. I think you’ve had quite enough.

The Delights Of Lady Mondegreen

                               “Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality” Joseph Conrad.

But then reality can be over rated.

While researching this blog, I realized that a few other sites have tread this path before ( Friday the 13th luck), but it's still worth a giggle...  

As a child, American writer Sylvia Wright used to like listening to her mother’s rendition of the Bonnie Earl of Murray from Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). Sylvia was very fond of this poem which includes the following stanza:

“Ye highlands and ye lowlands,

Oh, where hae you been?

They hae slain the Earl of Murray,

And laid him on the green.”

What Sylvia actually heard was one thing. Her brain retranslated the last two lines as

“they hae slain the Earl o Murray

and Lady Mondegreen.”

                                                       

In Sylvia’s mind Lady Mondegreen was a tragic heroine, murdered alongside her husband by the clan Gordon in the late 1550s. It was only much later in life that Sylvia realised she had misheard the whole thing and her vivid imagination had done the rest.  Sylvia then wrote an article in 1954 for Harpers magazine called “The death of Lady Mondegreen” and so the term ‘Mondegreen’ was born. The definition of a Mondegreen is “the mishearing of a phrase in such a way that it is commonly understood to have an alternative meaning.”  They appear all over the place in. In literature? Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland. The master was an old turtle but called tortoise because he taught us. That doesn’t work at all in a Scottish accent but never mind.
                                 
                                   


The film Life Of Brian, Monty Python Sermon on the Mount scene;

‘blessed are the cheese makers.’

‘What’s so special about the cheese makers?’

‘Well it’s obviously not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.’

                                   

And some have moved into popular culture:

Ted Striker: ‘Surely you can’t be serious!’

Dr Rumack: ‘I am serious and don’t call me Shirley!’

There is a famous Scottish legal one which was reproduced in the letters page of the times. It’s from a Scottish solicitor and notary public,  who received a letter addressed to a Scottish ‘solicitor and not a republic.’

My Aussie friend tells me that their national anthem, (written in the late 1800’s but only became the national song in 1984 ) is actually ‘Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free.’ It is commonly and mischievously sung as ‘Australians all own ostriches, four minus one is three.’

My own Mondegreen is that famous line from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody ; “Spare him his life from these warm sausages” . I think Freddie actually wrote something about ‘these monstrosities.’ My pal has heard that sung as ‘ Spare him his life for a warm cup of tea.’

Madonna is a Mondegreen treasure trove. La Isla Bonita. ‘“Young girl with eyes like potatoes.”  Eyes like the desert I believe.  “Last night I dreamt of some bagels.”  Dreamt of San Pedro?  'I am a material girl' can be heard as 'I am a cereal girl'. And what about ‘Holiday. Celebrate!’ being  Mondegreened as ‘Hollandaise. Salivate!’  I  think that’s an improvement.

 Like many children I did think the Lords prayer went “Harold be thy name, thy kingdom come.” Until I was old enough to be able to read it.

My gran, slightly hard of hearing used to sing along to that great Donna Summer disco classic. ‘I’ve been mugged’….. I feel love.

The most famous Mondegreen of all is Desmond Dekker’s ‘The Israelites’ often heard as ‘Oh my ears are alight.’ Painful but amusing.

More songs that should have been written? ‘Like a bridge over trouble, Walter,’ by Simon and Garfunkel. ‘I can see clearly now Lorraine has gone,’ by Jimmy Cliff. One wonders if Lorraine was very overweight or just never cleaned the windows. ‘Strawberry fields for Trevor.’ Enough said. And poor Eva Peron. ‘Don’t cry for me, I’m the cleaner…'  And what about this country classic, ‘He’s a  vile stoned cowboy,’?

Famous Abba Mondegreens for Chiquitita, tell me what’s wrong? 

               Chicken tikka, tell me what’s wrong

                    Kick yer teeth in, tell me what’s wrong.  ( Works well as a duet that one!)

The Rev Sabine Bearing- Gould wrote Onward Christian Soldiers in 15 minutes at some point in 1864 and freely admitted that some of the rhymes don’t really scan. But he might still object to the Mondegreen ‘Onward Christian’s soldiers, march your ass to war.’

Medical Mondegreens are common place, probably due to the  unusual terminology  and the brain attempting to hone in on something more recognisable.

It’s the Heimlich manoeuvre – not the Heimlich remover. There was the man with the ‘baloney amputation’. Below knee amputation I might suggest. A letter in a medical journal  told of a hospital department regulated by ‘ Sir Michael Spears.’ The letter should have referred to ‘cervical smears’.   And fibroids of the uterus used to be ‘fireballs of the uterus’, now called firewalls of the uterus.

But then again, ‘the first  noel, the angel did say, was to surgeons and shepherds in fields as they lay.’

I did have a patient who was confused and trying to be helpful, she couldn’t remember the big long name but  she was on ‘Anti bi ollocks.’                                                    

When I was very wee, my reader at school was ‘New worlds to Conquer.’ It was full of stories of Thor Heyerdahl. Fab. Then I found this  story about the man himself when he was at the BBC and they arranged for a car to take him to the airport. Cars came and went, but none for him. One car whoever waited a long time. Then the driver was asked who he was going to pick up. ‘Dogs,’ he said. ‘I’m here for four Airedales.’

                                                
                                                                compare and contrast...

If you listen hard to Stevie Winwood ‘Bring me a higher love.’ He is actually singing ‘Bring me an iron lung.’

There was another reported by letter in The Times. A  medical secretary typed ‘jockstrap position’. The phrase that had been dictated was of course ‘juxtaposition’.  But food for thought.

The disease cystic fibrosis has the well-known euphamisim /Mondegreen ‘sixty five roses.’

And while we are on bodily parts. Adam Ant? Stand and Deliver?  'Stan, it’s my liver!'

                                           
                                                  
                                                                        don and sancho

And what about these books that should have been written. Donkey hote.  Danger mouse liaisons. Catch one in the eye.

                                  

                                         just an excuse for a picture of a donkey cutey!

I think the one that might appeal most to the MIE bloggers comes from the author Monica Dickens. In 1964 she was at a book signing and a lady handed her a book. The woman said, as the author opened the page ready to sign,  Emma Chisit.  Monica signed the book, to Emma Chisit as she realized the woman had actually said, How much is it?

 Caro 13/09/2013