Are you getting these wrong too? 

An elderly gentleman once told me that his granddaughter had asked him to sing the “pie weighing song”. “The pie weighing song?”, he asked her, “I don’t think I know that one.” “Yes you do grandpa.” she insisted, “Some where over the rainbow, weigh a pie.”

My young foster children used to refer to me, an older carer, as their fossil father. I embraced the term.

Reminds me of a similar, actually quite popular phenomenon we have in Germany. It's when we hear German words, names or even full sentences in English song lyrics. We call those songs "Agathe Bauer" songs. The term originates from a woman calling a radio station, wishing for a song she thought was called "Agathe Bauer". What she meant was "I got the power" by "Snap!". This quickly became a trend and different radio stations have now collected hundreds of those songs. Might be worth an episode, I don't know.

Not strictly a Mondegreen but there is a line from La Donna e Mobile in Rigoletto that sounds just like “elephant’s ears”. We actually have an app now for producing Malapropisms. It’s called Autocorrect and for that I am internally grapefruit.

When I was 7 years old, I became ill with what was originally thought to be rheumatic fever. My classmates at school sent me hand-made “get well soon” cards, wishing me a quick recovery from my romantic fever.

My favourite malapropism was my Mum's. If I changed the subject, mid conversation, she would say "oh you're going off on a tandem again".

The internet is great because it lets you find other people who have the same incredibly niche interests as you.

I have frequently heard people say, "taunt" rather than saying, "taut." "Is the string taunt?" Sometimes, I would say politely (acting as if I didn't catch what they actually said, so not to come across as being rude), "yes, it's taut. I just tightened it." There were a few occasions where they would reply, 'you mean, 'taunt?'"

Oooh! I remember a mondegreen! John Fogerty (Credence Clearwater Revival) had a song that was misinterpreted by many as "There's a bathroom on the right." The actual lyric was "There's a bad moon on the rise." Fogerty got such a bang out of it that in one live performance he sang the bathroom version. 😄

My mother, now a nonagenarian and who only speaks Rioplatense Spanish, a few years ago was waiting for me happily and eagerly to show me the pendant with a beautiful cross that one of her great-granddaughters had given her. "It's liturgical steel!", she told me excitedly... in Spanish "Litúrgico" sounds quite similar to "Quirúrgico" (surgical) and logically, for my mother, the religious option made much more sense.

When my son was just a little boy, he mistakingly thought refrigerator was "fridge a-later" which totally makes sense, too.

My favourite mondegreen is the song “What a Wonderful World” sung by Louis Armstrong. He sings “and the dark sacred night” but it sounds like “and the dogs say goodnight”. 😏

When I first went to infants' school, aged 5, we learnt the Lord's Prayer by heart long before we learnt to read fluently. I misheard the last part and thought it was "for thine is the kingdom, the power and the chlorine". "Glory" wasn't a concept that had particularly had an impact on me, but chlorine I'd heard of, because it made your eyes sting in the swimming pool.

My childhood Mondegreen was hearing “Later on, we’ll perspire, as we dream by the fire” in “Winter Wonderland”.

I have a nice mondegreen, being a native dutch speaker. For the last 40 years or so I heard, in the Pink Floyd song One of the Few, "What do you do to make ants meat?" instead of "What do you do to make ends meet?"

As a young child, when I heard people saying "this morning," I thought they were saying "the smorning," and I wondered what a smorning was.

For all intensive porpoises

My brother heard the lyrics to You've Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille as the man having "400 children and a croc in the fields" so wasn't surprised the man was upset she'd left.

I would absolutely love for you all to do an episode on American vs British manglings of the poor French language. I don't know for certain who is worse, but after many years of listening to history youtubers from the UK I can - at the least - confidently say that the Brits have a deep and abiding love of mispronouncing French place names in fascinating and fantastical ways.

We often joke, "I'm waiting with a worm on my tongue." to mean "I'm waiting with bated [baited] breath."

I bought a whetstone just recently. It only cost a couple of bucks at Dollarama. I sharpened my jackknife and my cooking knives.

I learned a few years ago that a co-worker and I had opposite misunderstandings about the same word - "façade." I had only heard the word (or maybe saw it without recognizing it as the same word - like walaa! for viola!) and imagined that it was spelled "pha-sod." I think I imagined "ph" instead of "f" because it seemed kind of fancy. Meanwhile, my co-worker who grew up in Fiji had only seen the word, but never heard it pronounced. In his head it was "fa-kad."" When we figured out our equal and opposite mistakes, we were amazed at the coincidence that we could each be so wrong about the same word!

In Spanish Linguistics we call these “popular etymologies”. Less inventive a term than eggcorns, but obviously a reflection of people’s desire to make sense of them. 1. In Mexico, they call kites “papAlotes”, which comes from Nahuatl like “tomato” and “chocolate”, but people will sometimes call them“papelotes” (large paper) instead - you can guess why. 2. This one might be easy to understand as it pertains cognates to English words: people might say adversión” instead of “aversión” because they think it relates to the word for adverse (adverso). 3 My favourite by far is people pronouncing vagabundo (vagabond/beggar) as “vaga-mundo” (world-drifter). There’s also a super famous mondegreen that originated from the Mexican National Anthem. So many people hear a name at the start of a particular verse that it became a literary character and long-standing meme: Masiosare.

Here in America, I have even heard "chafing at the bit."

I love “Rob Words,” but I think I have a new favorite…

When I heard The Star-spangled Banner as a child I used to think it was by the dawnzerly light, which sounded like a perfect bright shimmering adjective.

The than/then confusion drives me up a wall (i.e “two is less than three” vs. “two is less then three”).

The most prominent mondegreen that always tripped me up and that has a somewhat unsavory alternate meaning was from the song "Blinded By The Light" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. There's an oft-repeated line in the chorus that actually says, "Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night". The first half of this line is famously heard by many as "Wrapped up like a douche". It's so established, it's actually hard to hear it the correct way even when the correct lyric is known.

My favorite was the child who heard "angels and archangels" and thought it was, "angels and dark angels" so was convinced that angels came in both white and black.

My favorite personal mondegreen was from when I was little and hearing in Sunday School about how Jesus cured a man with "leopard seeds"

Before I was 10 years old, I heard when someone committed suicide, they had committed sewer side, which in my brain meant they had offed themselves as the sewers are where waste goes.

My sister saw a classified ad once for what was obviously a "radial arm saw" for sale, but the advertiser had written "radio alarm saw".

Along with the wet/whet one you mentioned, the other one I keep hearing is 'on tender hooks' which kind of makes sense in a slightly grisly way - you could imagine being held in suspense by tiny hooks into tender flesh! The tenter was a frame for stretching cloth using hooks and so 'on tenter hooks' alludes to someone being under tension or apprehensive. I loved the extension to the eggcorn which Dave Gorman highlighted in one of his shows, where a misheard phrase 'Bowl in a china shop' was being used to mean something that is completely expected and unsurprising. Or to mean something fragile. It's the variations in language that make it so interesting - life would be so dull if we all spoke the same way.

I love these new poscasts - thank you. Being rather old and raised in the ULK with no TV when I was young, I read a lot. As a result, I know most of the "correct" versions. But watching the show I was wondering why I knew "champing at the bit". Then I remembered having to learn "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mere. It starts: ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor: Over 65 years ago, and it still sticks in my brain!

As a 76 year old I came across a lot of these in the correct form as a child. Our school reading books had loads of, even then, obsolete words like pitcher. (Which I now find in a US English context for jug along with sconce for wall light in my hidden object games). I recall Beacon book 3, I think, had the most brilliantly gruesome stories that would not be allowed today. Like Titty mouse and Tatty mouse. That tale had loads of old words that, but for the illustrations I would never have understood. Plus my versions of Grimms and Anderson and my mum's 1920s xmas annuals. We still had coal delivered by horse and cart when I was very little and the rag and bone man and old farmer Snape with his triangular veg stall, still used horses and carts so champing at the bit was something I heard in context. Plus my (working class but well read) parents explained meanings to us.

I learned "epitome" from reading. For a long time I pronounced Epi-Toam (I understood it to be the epic version of a thing), until I saw some one write it as they said it. And honestly when I read it I still in my mind hear Epi-Toam.

I find these endlessly entertaining! My children when young: Greatfruit definitely makes more sense than Grapefruit. (But I have no idea where tonynails came from.) Also my younger sister and friends were saying 'grosette' and I thought it was some sort of teenie-bopper speak. They were trying to say 'grotesque' and I made the correction but would never shame someone's attempt at a word they've read but never heard.

Keep the episodes coming, you two!

Ellis Peters entitled one of her books in the Felce series (Inspector Felce books set in the 1940s or 1950s) 'A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs'. Some authors get their book titles from funny sayings. It helps to sell books.

When I was young, Bold faced lie was one I used, I thought it was being bold, not bold letters.

The character you mentioned reminded me of Mrs Slocombe From the British Tv show "Are you being served" She always says that she is Unanimous in her opinions.

One of my sisters as a young child used to sing: little Harold's in your clothing, little Harold's in your hair, when you're in love you find those little Harold's everywhere. My youngest sister sang: the man who shot Bibbity Bobbins, he shot Bibbity Bobbins, he was the bravest of them all.

In "Fragile" by Sting, I always hear the lines "On and on, the rain will fall" as "On and on, the rainbow farm," and "On and on, the rain will say how fragile we are" as "On and on, the rainbow sea, how fresh all we are."

Jess, I’d been thinking about “one fell (foul) swoop” as video went one and then you mentioned it at the end. There used to be a yacht on Sydney Harbour named “One Foul Sloop”

At school, not paying attention, I became suddenly aware of the geography teacher asking me "why is market gardening in the Vale of Evesham intense"? I thought for a moment and answered, "because they don't have enough greenhouses".

My favorite eggcorn was provided by my great-uncle, a veteran of WW2 from the mountains of North Carolina. After coming home from an appointment, he let us know that he had to clean the bedsheets "'cause the doctor said I had "flea bite us". I swar there ain't no fleas in dis house!"

Malapropisms are sometimes called "Dogberryisms" after Shakespeare's Dogberry. I also love Mondegreens, misheard song lyrics.

I'm loving this channel. Etymology fascinates me. I've heard etymology and entomology occasionally confused. As a child, I thought ornery was spelled awnry. There was a car in the sixties, the Karmann Ghia, made by Volkswagen. In my Rhode Island accent, I visualized it being spelled as Common Gear. I once saw disburse used when disperse was meant in a traditionally published book. It seems no one employs proofreaders any longer

My favorite mondegreen was from a kid I was babysitting who was singing the Paul Simon song "Homeward Bound" and warbled "Home where my dog's escaping" instead of "Home where my thought's escaping." No wonder he wanted to get home.

My mondegreen was in Stairway to Heaven - every wino down the road, instead of - as we wind on down the road. 😂

Robs Scottish accent is pretty good, you can tell he’s not Scottish but it’s spot on.

My mondegreen: In I'd Really Love To See You Tonight by England Dan & John Ford Coley the chorus is "I'm not talking 'bout movin' in/And I don't want to change your life/But there's a warm wind blowin' the stars around/And I'd really love to see you tonight. For the longest time I was sure they were singing "I'm not talking about millennia..." I still think my lyric is better. As to eggcorns, when I was a kid, for years I said "taken for granite" instead of "taken for granted."

I used to work as wood-cutting machinist. I used a whetstone quite often. I do really love this channel. Thanks.

Are there any "fossil" eggcorns that have become correct over time from long usage?

Another favorite gift I received as a teen was Morris Word and Phrase Origins. I still have it and love it! I have a relative,who in an effort to sound intelligent, uses “big words” inappropriately. It is all I can do to not correct him or laugh.

A mondegreen from the 70's - my brother's friend Mike, used to sing those well known Bowie lyrics to Suffragette City: "don't lean on me man coz you canon-balled the chicken"...

It's common in my area for BSA shirts to have the phrase "Camping is in tents!" on them, but that's completely tongue in check. 😂 I'll see myself out.

I love this podcast. You guys have a great rapport. Don't know if this counts but one time I was watching CNN and the reporter called a fight among factions a "row" and pronounced it like "sew" or "go" instead of "now" or "sow". I might have yelled at the TV.

When I was a kid, I thought the song “It’s a Family Affair,” was It’s a family of bears.😁

For years, nay decades, for me there were two words for those little appetizer bites that you would get at receptions etc. The aural one sounded like ordurves. I never connected it with the written form, hors d'oeuvres, which in my head sounded like horsdovers. :D

My gf says “mind field” when she’s trying to be dexterous with something but finds it full of difficulties

I'm not sure which category this fits in, but there is a service where I live that allows you to rescue food that a shop or restaurant might otherwise throw away by purchasing it at a discount. The name of the company is "Too Good to Go." My husband and I both refer to it as "Too Good to Throw," and I have to force myself to say it correctly when I go to pick up my food.

As a child, I had problems with "raised to the ground", it wasn't till I started shaving that I understood my mistake.

MY favorite eggcorn (that I purposely use to humorously break someone's concentration) is "lost my (your) train of frogs?" 😅

I am From St. Louis, MO and St. Louisans are FAMOUS for mispronouncing French words. Many of our streets have French names. Gravois, for example should be pronounced Grav-wah. We say grav-oy or worse grav-oys. Chouteau should be shoe-teau, we say show-tow. Carondelet should be caron-del-ay, we say caron-del-et. As I child I would say forkhead for forehead and my brother would say con-creek for concrete 😁

I keep a Notes page on my iPhone, and record every eggcorn I see or hear. Some are annoying ("a real trooper" != trouper, "baited breath" != bated, "chomping at the bit" != champing), some are amusing ("neck gator" != gaiter, "Burrow of Manhattan" != Borough, "lamb blast" != lambast), but this one takes win, place and show: "went for the juggler" != jugular .

I once heard a BBC newsreader say "Hyper-bowl". 🤣

My 5 year old son came home from school and asked me what a "dance settee" was. When I asked for context he said they had sung a song with the words " Dance then, wherever you may be, He is the Lord of the dance said he".

A mondegreen to which I was subject for many years was from the "Silent Night" Christmas carol. I long thought the lyric was "round John virgin," instead of the correct "yon round virgin." "Round John" made more sense to me, but I also wondered who the heck he might be. In fact, I considered whether it might actually be "Long John virgin" because Long John was certainly a pirate like Long John Silver. Of course, I had no idea as a child what "virgin" meant, and it never occurred to me to question the possibility that there was a pirate in a Christmas carol.

I just got a text today that asked if I was "up and adam." It was a new one to me because I had always heard "up and at 'em." But "adam" kind of makes sense, too.

The one I got wrong, and still prefer, is "wrack my brains" when it should be "rack my brains". I think of wrack as to twist, while rack means to stretch it out like the medieval torture device.

You guys are a delightful team. I love the content and humor in your show! When I was in college in the late seventies Blue Oyster Cult had a hit that was always on the radio called Don’t Fear the Reaper back in a time when you couldn’t easily find printed song lyrics. One of my pothead friends would always sing “don’t fear the reefer” when it played. He argued with me a number of times that I had it wrong as it was his anthem.

Cartoonist Phil Interlandi penned "The Alpha Beté Noir" with the entry for P being Praying Mandatory or the Miserere. The accompanying illustration was of a preying mantis in bishop's robes and mitre. The text was words akin to: "This pious insect prays that his enemies will be devoured in time for its next devotions." Asked my mom at mass, "Who is Jenny Tory? [Genitori, genitoque, las et jubilatio...]

The one "MONDEGREEN" that drives me crazy is 10,000 Maniac's version of "BECAUSE THE NIGHT" when Natalie Merchant sings "The way I feel when I'm in your hands.", I hear it as "The way I feel in the automat". No matter how hard I try to un-hear it that way, I can't.... AND when I tell other people this, they don't even know what an "automat" is.

My two favorite misheard song lyrics: The first is from an obscure song whose name or artist I sadly can't remember anymore. "Knelt down we pray" became "melted wheat bread." And the best is in Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff. It's not even in English (I think it's Latin), but when the melody swells, and the choir gets really powerful, I swear I hear "F--k me buttercup."

When I hear moot point, I always think of Joey from Friends, "Moo point. It's like a cows opinion. It's moo."

Hearing how common and normal eggcorns are for everyone, even the more language-savvy people, makes me feel a whole lot better about thinking the phrase "rhyme or reason" was "rimer reason" for a very long time. I haven't heard of that one mentioned as an eggcorn before.

My sister is great at malapropisms. "Andy's mum sometimes gets called in to work for the police, she's a terminator." (translator) "I've had to get some cream for my dog because the vet said she's got the minge." (mange) "There was a right 'promotion' going on outside the shop this morning." (commotion) My own mondegreen would be from the Neil Diamond song "Reverend Blue Jeans." (Forever in)."

mondegreen.. as a child I heard Bohemian Rhapsody as "Beelzebub has a devils in a side-board.. you.. "

I’m an amateur word nerd. I love this!!!

My favourite Mondegreen “Glady, the cross-eyed bear"

My song is- 'Move my Jacket' The ACTUAL is - "move like jagger" :) My teen (at the time) complained they couldn't get the correct words , after I said my version out loud :) :) :>

Whenever my brother wanted to describe presenting something with a flourish, he would say "Wallah!". It took me years to realise it was meant to be the "Voila!" I had learned in school French.

In the part of the south I'm from we tend to use the word leary, as in to be leary of someone as opposed to be wary of someone. A blending of these two could help explain the use of weary in place of wary.

Hilarious, as always! It is not only interesting to watch how meanings change within a language, it is also interesting to see how the meaning of a particular word diverges from one language to another. There are several variants. One word originally had a certain meaning, but in different languages the meaning got mangled in different directions. Or sometimes a "foreign" word gets imported and is simply completely misappropriated. Then there are loads of homophones that are not the same word at all. Last not least, there are "false friends" galore. A similar case is where a word with a quite general meaning goes across to another language for exclusive usage in a very limited context. Another rather funny case is when a word should go over, and internationally does, but cannot go to a specific language because at the other end it would be equivalent to something indecent. Subsequently it has to receive a replacement.

I'm more than a bit OCD about the sharpness of my kitchen knives and use a whetstone pretty much daily... I see 'weary' where the author meant 'wary' evading proof-readers a lot these days. I believe it's an eggcorn, as they're reading the 'wear' component as in 'wear and tear'.

You two play of each other so well! Love the vlog. Look forward to whatever is next. Thanks!!

My great-grandmother, when speaking of occasions when the authorities had to close off an area, possibly because of unexploded wartime bombs, would say "The police threw an accordion round it."

Bouncealine is my favourite. Misappeared is another. Hotcorn also

15:44 - *literally* her job!

I have heard many people singing lyrics that are wrong. Barbra Ann as bomb Iran, In the song blinded By the Light from Bruce Springsteen and made popular by Manfred Mann, revved up like a duece became a feminine hygene item. That mistake is the reason it did so well. Of course ELO's Don't Bring Me Down the word groos becomes Bruce. In everyday words I worked in an auto parts store and someone would ask for a Cadillac converter as well as a Catalina converter instead of catalytic converer. Choirpractor instead of chiropractor. Many times it was either first or second generation immigrants coming from poorer American communities with less quality teachers. I worked with a guy that said so many we had a notebook of them. Of course you can't be rude and laugh or correct them.

She's got a ticket to ride as sheep's got a chicken to ride

Is that the whole "kitten kaboodle" that Rob mentions at the end of the video? 🤣

On the eggcorn, wary/weary, I always thought folks were trying to incorporate the word, "leery," the latter I often use. 😮

One of my pet peeves is when the boss says we need to "flush out the requirements" vs "flesh out the requirements" of a ticket.

Music lyrics are a tremendous source of eggcorns. For decades I heard an Elton John song _Bennie And The Jets_ nas: "She has electric *boobs,* a mohair suit".

Just heard Peter Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers” the other day and even though I know the real French lyrics, still sounds like “She’s so popular” as I originally heard it (“Jeux sans frontieres”). Billy Idol’s “Les yeux sans visage” became “pleasure’s always on” and Beck’s “Soy un perdador” became “so I opened the door” even though I spoke a little French and Spanish when those songs came out.

I heard a farmer in Indiana being interviewed on the news about a tornado. He said that it created a lot of "derbis" (rather than debris). I like his mispronunciation and use it for humorous effect.

My mother was teaching me to write the alphabet when I young and after we were through I asked, "how do you make an Elemenohpee?"

OMG. It’s spelled “whetstone?” I’ve ALWAYS spelled it “Wet stone” BECAUSE IT HAS TO BE WET TO WORK PROPERLY. (Which is why you often see people spitting on them.) As opposed to what I’ve always called “dry stones,” that don’t have to be wet!!!