“‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy!” “Mondegreen” is the “official” term for a misunderstood lyric phrase. The term “Mondegreen” is said to come from a commonly misunderstood phrase in “The Bonny Earl of Murray”; the phrase “laid him on the green” was mis-heard as “Lady Mondegreen.”
The term was coined in a 1954 article in Harper’s Magazine, by author Sylvia Wright. Psychologists posit that a mondegreen results when the brain is unable to understand a lyric and attempts to find a replacement phrase. In at least one case, the mondegreen became so prevalent that the song’s lyrics changed; in The “12 Days of Christmas,” the original lyric was “four colly birds” (four black birds), which was so often mis-heard that the lyric changed to “four calling birds.”