We humans are notorious for butchering our native tongue in strange and often humorous ways. But did you know there are terms for some of those linguistic faux pas? Let’s take a look at a few kinds of misheard and misused expressions:
Malapropisms
A malapropism is the use of an incorrect word in place of another similar sounding correct one, often with unintentionally amusing effect. The name comes from the character Mrs. Malaprop in the eighteenth-century play The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Her name is actually a play on the French mal á propo, literally “poorly placed.”
The character of Mrs. Malaprop uses wrong words that sound like the correct ones—for example, saying “allegory” instead of “alligator,” “pineapple” instead of “pinnacle,” and “epitaph” for “epithet.”
We might hear someone say, “Jesus healed the leopards [lepers],” “He is a man of great statue [stature],” or “We went to Vatican City to visit the Sixteenth [Sistine] Chapel.” All of these mistakes fall into the category of malapropisms.
Mondegreens
A similar usage error is the mondegreen, a word or phrase that results from a mishearing, especially of something recited or sung. The term derives from a misheard line in a Scottish folk song. The song’s lyrics include the line “laid him on the green,” but listeners thought they were hearing “Lady Mondegreen.”
Mondegreens aren’t always related to misheard song lyrics, but examples from popular music are certainly frequent and familiar. For instance, Jimi Hendrix did not sing, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy,” and Creedence Clearwater Revival did not point out that “There’s a bathroom on the right.”
Many years ago, I misheard a line from “The Tears of a Clown” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. I thought “just like Pagliacci did” was “just like my Yahtzee kid.” While I had never heard of Pagliacci, I had played Yahtzee.
I also mistook “I thought the major was a lady suffragette” in Paul McCartney’s “Jet” for “I thought the major was a lady, so forget!” A friend of mine thought Elton John’s rocket man was out in space “burning all the shoes he ever owned” instead of “burning out his fuse up here alone.” No doubt you’re guilty of a few mondegreens of your own.
Eggcorns
Once described as a “slip of the ear,” an eggcorn is a usage mistake that results from a seemingly logical alteration of a misheard word or phrase. Have you ever heard someone say that something does not “pass mustard,” that they take something for “granite,” or that they are repeating an “old wise tale”? These misheard words and phrases are all “eggcorns.”
The word “eggcorn” was coined by a linguist after he heard of a woman who complained about “eggcorns” falling from an oak tree onto her car. She was obviously referring to an “acorn,” but she may have heard it as “eggcorn” all her life. Regardless, the mistake is actually rather sensible given that acorns are egg shaped and their seed looks much like a kernel of corn. In any event, linguists soon adopted this word to apply to all such mistakes.
Unlike mondegreens and malapropisms, eggcorns make a modicum of sense and therefore have the possibility of becoming widespread and perhaps even replacing the original term. A person might mention entering “unchartered waters,” a phrase quite close to the correct “uncharted waters,” or point out that someone is “scandally clad.” If we have never seen the written word “scantily,” we might easily think we heard “scandally” instead. After all, if someone is scantily clad, that person may indeed cause a scandal in certain contexts, no?
Sometimes a Misreading Sticks
Perhaps my favorite instance of an eggcorn is “helpmate.” In the King James Version of the Bible, Genesis 2:18 says that God will make a “help meet” (Eve) for Adam. When the KJV was produced in the seventeenth century, “help” could mean a companion and “meet” meant appropriate or fit. Seeing that the animals were not suitable companions for Adam, God creates Eve. Later readers could not make sense of this two-word phrase and substituted “mate” for “meet,” which makes better sense to readers unaware of the older use of “meet.” And because the two words sounded as if they were one word, we ended up with “helpmate.”
Of course, the meaning of a word can legitimately change over time, and in a future article we will talk about some of the more interesting shifts. For now, I hope you have enjoyed this review of some of the quirky ways we (mis)use our language. Until next time, “gentile” readers, it may be a “doggy-dog world” out there, but don’t curl up into a “feeble position.” Charge into the linguistic sea, “full stream ahead”!
PS: If you have a favorite “slip of the ear,” please share it in the comments below. I’d love to hear it!
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Dr. Ron Cooper, the author of this blog post, has written three other posts on this site: “Curmudgeon Bemoans Confusion,” “You’re Still on My Lawn,” and “Begging the Question.” A senior professor of philosophy at the College of Central Florida in Ocala, Florida, Dr. Cooper is also a novelist and poet. In 2018, he won a Florida book award for his latest novel, All My Sins Remembered. He is an amateur bluegrass musician who challenges anyone to play and sing worse than he does.
Thanks for an entertaining and enlightening article! While a lit teacher introduced us to the errors of Mrs. Malaprop, I didn’t know there were terms for other usage errors, i.e., Mondegreens and eggcorns.
Here’s my eggcorn. As kid growing up in New York, when we said the Our Father in school (recited in both public and parochial schools–I’m dating myself), we would say “. . .and lead us not into Penn Station” instead of “temptation.” But for anyone who knows anything about Penn Station, this is a perfectly understandable eggcorn.
Hey Eileen,
Penn Station can indeed sometimes be a trial, right? Thank you for your response.
This summer I discovered I’ve been mishearing the “Footloose” lyrics since 1984. Apparently, Kenny Loggins is “punching my card” rather than having “lunch in my car.”
My husband once had a boss who talked about the importance of having “your ducks in the road.” Poor ducks.
Love those, Julie! I wonder if your husband’s boss ever considered that a road is probably not the best place to put your ducks. 🙂
Ron Cooper
Hey Eileen,
Penn Station can indeed sometimes be a trial, right? Thank you for your response.
Attending my first funeral at the age of 5, I was profoundly impacted watching the box lowered into the grave as the Father blessed the soul. From that point on, when I bless myself – “In the name of the Father, the Son, into the hole he goes.”
Thank you, Robert. It indeed makes sense, right?
Sometime during the height of the 2004 presidential election build-up, I was driving along, half listening to a familiar song on the radio, when I thought I heard the lyric, “Bush is Kerry.” I did a double take and looked it up when I got home. The song (and the lyric) was “Voices Carry” by the band ‘Til Tuesday.
Ann, I think I would have had to pull my car over to the side of the road on that one!
For years I thought the expression was “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes.” I still have to think twice when I use it.
Lynn, don’t feel bad about this one! This one is quite common because the two sound almost exactly alike, and “intensive” sort of makes sense, right? My guess is that if you say “intensive” those who hear you will not hear (or know) the difference anyway. So, I say, don’t even think twice.