Given the associated factors of diction and high volume noise, Mondegreenisms in modern pop music are legion, one of the most iconic is the misinterpretation by untold number of listeners of Jimi Hendrix’s line, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky” (“Purple Haze”) as “Excuse me while I kiss the guy“. I can hear the ranks of the slightly incredulous intoning “I didn’t know there was a word for that!” Hendrix “excuse me…” A Mondegreen is where you mishear or misinterpret a phrase-especially a song lyric but it could also be a line from a poem-with the result that you give it a new and different meaning. If the ABC conducted a vox-pop in Martin Place “Mondegreen” would likely draw a blank, however the concept itself is a different story…anyone exposed to popular music would have at some point either unknowingly committed a Mondegreen or observed someone else in the act. Would the latte-sipping, smashed avocado inner city set recognise a Mondegreen, Mumpsimus or Eggcorn when they see one? Probably not, these three linguistic odd fellows are the domain of dedicated language buffs and word nerds. One of the most referenced examples is “you have hissed my mystery lecture”, instead of “you have missed my history lecture”. Spoonerisms are another type of verbal misstep where the speaker makes a “slip of the tongue”, accidentally transposing the initial consonants of two consecutive words, often with humorous results. Myself, I tend to associate Malapropisms (the accidental substitution of a incorrect word in place of another, usually similar-sounding one) in fiction with Arthur Daley, the small-time, dodgy as-they-get wheeler dealer in TV’s Minder (“From now on the world is your lobster”, the “Arfur” Daley variation on “oyster”) and in real life with former Australian PM Tony Abbott (“the suppository of all wisdom” (should have said “repository”)). For these two terms for errors in natural speech (or if you prefer, modes of original linguistic inventiveness) we have the fictional “Mrs Malaprop” and the real life “Reverend Spooner” to thank. The chances are most folk with a passing interest in words and language have come across the odd Malapropism and Spoonerism in their travels. Throughout history it can be found in other forms such as “a storm in a wash-basin,” but the most frequently used remains “a storm in a teacup.” ExampleĪn example of this expression can be found in the headline of an article on the BBC news website from March 2012 which reads “Google privacy row: storm in a teacup?” The article goes on to explore whether the change in Google’s policy is really as extreme as it has been made out and thus whether people have blown it out of proportion.“Arfur D” Malapropising (Photo: ITV/Scope) The expression “storm in a teacup,” is relevant to British English, however, American English uses the slightly different variant of “a tempest in a teapot.” The expression can be traced back to the Latin “excitabat enim fluctus in simpulo ut dicitur Gratidius,” translated as, “for Gratidius raised a tempest in a ladle, as the saying is.” The expression did not, however, begun to be used in the current form until 1815 when Britain’s Lord Chancellor Thurlow referred to an uprising on the Isle of Mann as “a tempest in a teapot.” It was then in 1838 that the British English version “a storm in a teacup,” was first used in Catherine Sinclair’s Modern Accomplishments. In general it is used when someone is unnecessarily angry or worried about something. The expression is used to denote a small incident which has been blown out of proportion and exaggerated. The expression “a storm in a teacup,” is used as a metaphor in English and does not directly relate, as one may imagine, to the weather.
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