Grammar Moses: Give me your eggcorns, your mondegreens, your malapropisms

Has anyone ever pointed out to you that something you've been saying for most of your life is not ... quite ... right?

While singing along to a song from your youth have you come to realize the lyrics you thought you knew were, well, something quite different?

I've been there and done that more than I'd like to admit.

Being the oldest child of parents who preferred Beethoven, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and Mozart, which are woefully short on lyrics, and Doris Day music, whose lyrics I'd like to forget, I was on my own to develop musical habits.

I had no older kids' records to listen to. My wife is the youngest of seven, and she was fortunate to have Steppenwolf and a variety of bands and contemporary singers wafting throughout her family's small Chicago Georgian as soon as she was loosed upon the world. For her, an introduction to music of the '60s was inescapable.

I've always envied that, and the influence of her sibs.

I listened to Top 40 radio on a used, cracked, hot pink, AM-only transistor radio I won in a contest in second or third grade at Dwyer Elementary School in Arlington Heights.

This ugly piece of plastic redefined low fidelity. I'm lucky I was able to make out any words emanating from its 1½-inch speaker.

So I either misheard or misinterpreted lyrics all the time.

And as a youngster with no older sibs to confer with, I was mystified by the concept of the metaphor.

I thought Steve Miller's “The Joker” involved fruit farming.

Listen to it, and you'll see what I mean. Judging by my dad's reaction to it, I gather it involved something dirty.

I misinterpreted the Temptations when they sang, “And when he died, all he left us was alone.”

A much younger me extrapolated that since Papa would beg, borrow and steal that when he died, all he left us was a loan (in debt).

Make sense? It did to me. It still does. It was my first run-in with a homophone, I guess.

When the Buckinghams sang “Kind of a Drag,” I misinterpreted it entirely as “Canada Dry.”

Why? My world and my brain were small. When Mom allowed us to drink pop, it was a Canada Dry ginger ale, cut with grape juice to give it the illusion of something healthy.

It's only natural that I would grow up to be a grammar columnist, I guess.

So why am I taking you on a painful trip through my childhood?

Because I have a bone to pick with Robert Fulghum, the author of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

We all learned a lot of things in kindergarten that we've had to unlearn the rest of our lives — not the stuff our teachers equipped us with, but just about everything else our spongy little brains absorbed without benefit of adult vetting.

There are words for these misinterpreted words, of course, and I'd like to hear all about yours.

Let me repeat: I would like to hear about the things you got wrong and about the embarrassing ways in which you learned what the real words or phrases are.

You get two gold stars if you did this while making a speech, while on air or while addressing a VIP.

I'm working on a new project, you see. More on that at a later date.

Mondegreens

A mondegreen is what is created when one mishears a lyric and substitutes with other words that make some sort of sense.

Scottish writer Sylvia Wright admitted that as a child she misinterpreted a line from “The Bonny Earl of Moray” that went “They hae slain the Earl o' Moray and laid him on the green.”

She heard it as “They hae slain the Earl o' Moray and Lady Mondegreen.”

That paints a different sort of picture, doesn't it?

Mondegreens can sometimes eclipse the lyrics they screw up. Phoebe on “Friends” years ago misinterpreted Elton John's “Tiny Dancer” with “Hold me close, young Tony Danza.” Elton and a bunch of other people recently recorded “Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza.”

I doubt my “Canada Dry” gaffe will ever measure up.

Eggcorns

I don't know that anyone has ever drawn a line between eggcorns and mondegreens, but the concepts are quite similar. Mondegreens generally are thought of as lyrical misinterpretations, while eggcorns comprise a broader group.

“Eggcorn” in fact is an eggcorn for “acorn.”

Others include a “doggy dog world,” “this won't pass mustard” and “for all intensive purposes.” If any of those look right to you, I regret to inform you that you have some eggcorns in your pockets.

Malapropisms

Malapropisms are really more of the same. The requirement, though, is that the resultant misinterpretation is funny. But then all of these are, right?

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/executive editor of the Daily Herald. You can buy Jim's book, “Grammar Moses: A humorous guide to grammar and usage,” at grammarmosesthebook.com. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com and put “Grammar Moses” in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.