"Oh, so THAT'S what he said!"
Everyone has had the moment where, after hearing a song on the radio a million times, you finally realize what the real lyric is.
A word or phrase misheard in this way is called a mondegreen, and that word was recently added to the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. More than 100 words were added to the dictionary, including the ones listed on the front page of yesterday's Daily Breeze. Many of them are a mouthful, but this one is an earful. Merriam-Webster defines it as "a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung."
According to Merriam-Webster, the word traces its origin to the mishearing of the line "laid him on the green" in a Scottish ballad as "Lady Mondegreen."
You've likely never heard that song, but you can find a collection of more than 100,000 misheard lyrics on the Web at http://www.kissthisguy.com/.
If that phrase sounds familiar to you, you're one of people who have misheard the line "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" in Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," after which the site is named.
The site is searchable by both artist and song title. If that's not enough for you, there's even an RSS feed of the funniest additions of the week. Happy (mis)hearing!
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