Ditch Chew Her Watch Youth Awe Shooted?

By Suzanne Richardson

"What did you just say?" I clicked off the stereo.

My fiance and I had been singing along with the radio at top volume.

"It's been a while since I wasn't a jerk to you," he replied.

"Is that the lyric?" I asked. "I thought it was, 'And it's been a while since I wasn't addicted.'" (Turns out it's actually "And it's been awhile/ Since I can say that I wasn't addicted.")

We'd stumbled unwittingly into a mondegreen - a phrase (often from a song lyric) that is misheard and, thus, misinterpreted.

The word "mondegreen" is usually attributed to American writer Sylvia Wright. In a 1964 Harper's column, she revealed that she'd long misunderstood a line in the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray." The last two lines are: "They ha'e slain the Earl of Murray/ And they laid him on the Green." Wright believed them to be: "They ha'e slain the Earl of Murray/ And Lady Mondegreen." When she discovered her error, she lent the non-existent Lady's name to a very common mistake that most everybody has made. (For the longest time, I thought the Beatles' "Band on the Run" was "Man on the Run.")

Other examples of mondegreens:

• "The girl with colitis goes by" - from the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." The real lyric: "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes."

• "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" - from the Jimmy Hendrix classic "Purple Haze." The real lyric: "Scuse me while I kiss the sky."

• "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear" - from the hymn "Keep Thou My Way." The real lyric: "Gladly the cross I'll bear."

(Source: SFGate.com)

It's Fun to Know: The Long Trek of the Humpback Whale

The next time your kids complain about the long car trip to Grandma's house, tell them to be thankful they aren't humpback whales. Humpback whales spend the summer feeding in the waters off the Arctic Peninsula, and then travel 5,000 miles to spend the winter in their breeding grounds on the Equator. This is the longest migration made by any mammal.

Word to the Wise: Dishabille

"Dishabille" (dis-uh-BEEL) - from the French for "to undress" - is the state of being carelessly or partially clothed.

Example (as used by Anita Shreve in Fortune's Rocks): "She imagines the shocked faces of Josiah or her father or her mother were any of them to come around the corner and catch her in her dishabille."

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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2278, 02-14-08], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.