Reverend Bluejeans
The Merriam-Webster people are out with their list of new words. My favorite: Mondegreen. a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung <“very close veins” is a mondegreen for “varicose veins”
Not only are deliberate mondegreens a great source of humor for me -- if not the people around me -- but they're something I do accidentally all the time, usually with music. The title of this post is a reference to a Neil Diamond song, "Forever In Blue Jeans," that I thought for years was about some kind of itinerant preacher, "Reverend Bluejeans." When my wife found out about that she mocked me unmercifully for...well, so far, forever. She still brings it up.
Anyway, now I have a word for that which turns Creedence Clearwater Revival's "There's a Bad Moon on the Rise" into instructions on how to get to the bathroom.
Soon, the act of "mondegreening" a phrase (let me be the first to use "mondegreen" as a verb) will be a recognized disorder, with a pharmaceutical cure advertised on TV, most likely during football games.
I, too, thought for years that he was singing "Reverend Bluejeans". I am still un-mercilessly mocked for my mistake. I still sing it that way because it's just too much fun.
I also do this in normal conversation, such as when I tell people at work that I'm getting irrigated, or I try to get everyone to precipitate in the meeting.
Most of the time I do it to see if anyone is really paying attention. Other times I use it to gauge the intelligence of the person I'm speaking with.
Posted by: Frank | 07/08/2008 at 02:12 AM
What, you mean "there's a bathroom on the right" constitutes good directions?
Posted by: darms | 07/08/2008 at 09:14 PM