Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.

Subject: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Margo
Date: 05 Jun 99 - 02:38 PM

The Hogeye thread got me thinking about misheard and misspoken language: Also listed in Hugill's book are versions of Hogeye man being Hawkeye man and Ox-eye man. The letters G and K are made in the same place: one "voiced" and the other "plosive".

The biblical saw "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven" is actually not the original wording. As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong) the word camel is a misunderstanding of the Hebrew word for rope, which when spoken sounds like the word "camel". But even with the wrong word, the saying makes sense, and is accepted. Of course, the rope is being compared to a thread. Ahhhhh, yes. The rope/thread analagy makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?

Then there is the Shanty "Row, Bullies Row." I read that the person who collected songs and wrote them down misunderstood the words Roll Bullies Roll. The ship pitches and rolls, so roll makes more sense to me. I choose to sing "roll" myself, being stubborn.

I'd love to hear your examples of such misunderstood or misspoken lyrics. (I love etemology, don't know why).

Margarita

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Philippa
Date: 05 Jun 99 - 02:43 PM

see the mistakes thread for more 'Mondegreens'

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Mark Roffe
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 03:30 AM

"The spitting image" of someone is actually "the spit and image" of them, I think. Is that right?

I've also become accepting of "a mute point" instead of "a moot point."

Bark Woof

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: The Shambles
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 07:21 AM

Vicious circle, becomes, vicious CYCLE!

Although when walking in pedestrian only areas and avoiding speeding cyclists, it gives the phrase another meaning?

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Dan Calder
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 08:58 AM

Now it's almost always "Music hath charms to soothe the savage BEAST."

Dan

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Jeri
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 10:25 AM

I suppose this sort of thing was bound to happen in an age where nuculer weapons threatened to wreck havoc upon the earth and people could care less, irregardless of the cost.

Obviously, I cannot think of any examples of song lyrics where Mondegreens have been folk-processed into the song.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Margo
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 12:59 PM

Yes Dan, I understand it was originally the savage BREAST.

Mark, What did the saying mean, the spit and image?

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Ted from Australia
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 06:18 PM

"One fell swoop" has become "One foul swoop"
(I really hate that)

Regards Ted

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Margo
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 06:40 PM

I've never heard "foul" swoop. Although I suppose it could be "fowl" swoop. (Dive bombing chickens?)

Margarita

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Ted from Australia
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 06:50 PM

Margarita,
here in Oz it would have to be a "Chook swoop" :-)>
Regards Ted

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: bob schwarer
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 07:47 PM

A "mute point" is something you don't want to talk about. Bob S.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Matthew B.
Date: 06 Jun 99 - 08:26 PM

Well, I just read this one thing in one swell foop.

Actually, as a former trumpet player, I can tell you that there are some mutes that come to a point at the end, so that's a "mute point" I guess.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Margo
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 01:08 AM

Very funny, Matthew. I used to be a trumpet player once. I didn't get far with it, though. I was told by another trumpet player that it was because my front teeth are like Buicks. Really, they're not that big. But I do better at singing. Perhaps that's because when I sing, my teeth are a moot issue. They are also mute.:o)

Margarita

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: The Shambles
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 09:18 AM

when I moved here I thought all the 'kids' knew somone called Slater.

I later found out that they were saying 'see you later'.

SLATER.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Bert
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 09:44 AM

One that REALLY GETS TO ME is 'second of all'. It should be 'second of all but one' because 'first of all' has already taken care of the first one.
and soon momentarily will mean soon.

I agree with jeri about 'could care less'

Where has all the logic gone?

Bert

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: annamill
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 09:57 AM

There used to be a phrase meaning a person has a bad reputaion which was "a bad rep". Now everyone says "a bad rap", like a rap sheet at the police station. It seems noone remembers the other version at all.

annap

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Margo
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 10:48 AM

Yes, Bert. It should be "I couldn't care less". I had some friends who would say, "jeat? No, Jew?" They were saying "Did you eat? No, did you?" It's amazing how a little lazy tongue can change an expression. I have a friend who insists on saying things her way. She likes to say "Flahita" instead of Fajita. I've corrected her and she tells me to leave her alone. Hmmm........good thing her daughter is an excellent speller.

Margarita

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Bert
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 11:06 AM

Another one is 'Artesian' instead of 'Artisan' - Well, well!

Bert

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 11:33 AM

OK, Bert - I feel a quibble coming on.
If you're giving examples, you come up with all of them. Then you talk about the first. This is the first of all. Then you talk about the second. Out of all the examples, this one's the second, so it's the second of all.

There were five examples of my pet peeves in my previous post. The second (of all five) was "wreck havoc."

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Easy Rider
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 12:11 PM

Does anyone know where the expression, "The Whole Nine Yards", comes from and what it means?

I do. I'll post the answer, in a couple of days, after everybody has given it their best shot.

EZR

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Fadac
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 12:30 PM

Nine Yards, I have heard all sorts of basics for this. My favorite? A ship rigged sailing vessel, has three masts, each with three square sails. The top bit of wood is called a yard. In the days of fighting sail, people would try a fake out the other guy. Most of the battle would be jocking for position, so when the ship changed directions, the yards had to be trimed for the new wind direction. So shifting all the sail was to commit all nine yards.

I have also heard the 9 yard referance to length of a machine gun belt in the WWII fighters, So when they shot "the whole 9 yards." they were out of ammo. However, I thinkg the sailing referance is older.

My favorite miss heard is "There is a bathroom on the right". Very handy but the song really says, "There is a bad moon on the right." Hmmm, nice, indicating West bound here in the US. However now quite as usefull as all those bathrooms.

Fadac

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Bert
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 12:45 PM

Jeri,
It seems you have some misconception of what the expression 'first of all' really means. You are assuming that 'first of all' is an ordinal statement which it isn't. It is a 'cardinal' statement, it makes the prime position special and exclusive.
If you wan't to talk ordinally there are adequate words for doing so, 'firstly', 'secondly' and so on.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 01:00 PM

But what if I mean it as an ordinary statement? (No, I don't understand what you're saying.)

By the way, the word "nice" originally meant "foolish."

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Bert
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 01:12 PM

Jeri,

If you don't mean to assign any special importance to the first position then you don't need to say 'first of all'. You can simply say 'first' which sets the stage for there being a 'second'. When you say 'first of all' you are saying that this case is special and is of prime importance. It stands above 'all' the others. If a thing is second, it logically cannot stand 'above all the others', because you just said the first one did that when you said 'first of ALL'.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 01:25 PM

Thanks, Bert! All is clear now.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Rich and Dee (inactive)
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 02:09 PM

Hi,

And let's not forget the ever-popular "for all intensive purposes...", which should be "for all intents and purposes..."

Rich

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Fadac
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 02:57 PM

Oops, In USA, moon to right would say East bound. Still not as usefull as all the bathrooms.

Must be Monday, All bas aswords.

Fadac

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Peter Fisher
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 04:40 PM

The word literally has now come to mean its exact opposite, figuratively, as when the newscaster this morning asserted that the Kosovar refugees were literally being baked by the heat.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Den
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 07:06 PM

Old Mrs McCormack used to call us juvenile detergents when we kicked our soccer ball into her back garden. She also thought the postman spoke with a funny accident (he was East Indian) and she once had to get oinkment for an ear infection.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Margo
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 08:23 PM

Ah yes! First of all, for all intensive purposes, there's a bathroom on the right! Leave it to FADAC to know about the nine yards, the old salt! I guess his knowing the answer right away took the wind out of your sails, eh Easy Rider? NyukNyukNyuk FADAC, you really wreaked havoc with Easy Rider's guessing game! Margarita

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 07 Jun 99 - 11:40 PM

Folk etymology is fun, but seldom reliable. I've heard "nine yards" as referring to the amount of brocade on a roll; also as the contents of a concrete ready-mix truck. Does anyone have an early date for use of the phrase?

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: ddw in windsor
Date: 08 Jun 99 - 10:49 PM

Is it really "Bad moon on the right"? All these years I've thought it was "bad moon on the rise."

I'll have to dig out the old CCR vinyl when I get home.....

ddw

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 09 Jun 99 - 02:04 AM

And when did the great descriptive phrase "buck naked" turn into "butt naked"? Also, I now hear as many people saying "supposably" as I do "supposedly", although this is a great test to separate the idiots from the rest of us.

LEJ

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Bert
Date: 09 Jun 99 - 11:18 AM

LEJ, anyone trying to 'separate the idiots from the rest of us' is going to find that rather difficult here.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Kris
Date: 09 Jun 99 - 12:04 PM

I cannot abide it when people say 'pacific' in place of 'specific'. (Tho' I used to horribly guilty of constantly saying 'spexo' instead of 'I expect so')

Kris

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: sharon
Date: 09 Jun 99 - 12:07 PM

My mother in law is always crocheting another "african." even though my husband tells her that it is impossible to do!

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: walrus
Date: 09 Jun 99 - 02:05 PM

I've just caught this thread. Going back to Margarita's post on camels and needles, as I heard the story camel IS the correct translation but it should be "the eye of the needle" (not a needle). Many years ago I was told that "the eye of the needle" was a name for what we would call a "judas gate", the small pedestrian door in a much larger set of gates (such as the gates of a town); a camel COULD pass through the eye of the needle, but only with a lot of hard work, persuasion and without its burden.

Walrus

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Jun 99 - 09:26 PM

The only correct use of "hopefully" is as in "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive".

First - not "firstly".

But can anyone tell me what "I should coco" ought to be and why?

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Mark Roffe
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 01:30 AM

"All's I know's it's a doggy dog world."

Margarita, I think to be the very "spit and image" of someone is to be comprised of the same stuff and to look jes alike. But I've never seen a "spitting image" (although I have seen a fountain statue that peed).
Bark

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Bert
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 08:56 AM

'I should coco' is rhyming slang for 'I should hope so'.
Kind of a crude rhyme but a very popular expression in SE England.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 09:38 AM

No way Bert!

"I should coco" (or "Ice your cocoa" as it has been memorably rendered) means the same thing as "Not on your Nellie" and implies a certain amount of derision.

Rhyming slang for 'I should hope so'? I should coco!

Kris

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Margo
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 10:54 AM

Bark Woof, of course you'd think it's a doggy dog world! That's funny. I never thought of that. Have you actually heard anyone say that? Hmmm........must have been a juvenile detergent.

Den, I know of another lady that makes up words like that, but unfortunately I can't think of anything she says offhand.

KingBrilliant, I'm not familiar with "Not on your Nellie". Is it to say you're wrong?

Margarita

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Mark Roffe
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 01:11 PM

Margarita,
Yes, Marita Malone used to say "it's a doggy dog world." This is the same person whose retort to a contingent of Save the Whale folks was "My mother died and I had to get used to that -- why should I worry about the whales?" (which actually bears thinking about). By the way, Marita loved the whales; it's just that that was her unique way of comparing losses in her life...

Bark

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 01:25 PM

I know that "I should coco" is an impolite (and class-specific) southern English expression of disbelief or rebuttal. I am from the relevant region. But I am very well over twenty and the first time I heard it was about 15 years ago. At first I thought it was "I should, cocoa" referring to social exclusion of the speaker on grounds of colour. It was explained to me that it was "I should, Coco" referring to Coco the clown and therefore implying that the rejected statement was laughable. But neither is a really satisfying explanation, like the various theories about "Berkeley Hunt" or "Berkshire Hunt".

Any more bids?

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Penny S.
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 03:13 PM

I read somewhere that spitting image came from "splitting image", and referred to the way that the two sides of a split log are mirror images of each other (the same would apply to split rock), but I haven't been able to find the reference.

Penny

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: T in Oklahoma
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 04:16 PM

In "The Wreck of the Old 97", the words "lost his airbrakes" were misinterpreted as "lost his average." It is often heard with the latter words.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 05:06 PM

I looked up "spitting image" at this site - http://www.itools.com/research-it/ This looks like a great site!

Main Entry: spitting image
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of spit and image
Date: 1901

I still don't know why "spit and image" means identical, unless it has to do with cleaning a mirror off.

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Penny S
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 05:12 PM

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable suggests that the spit part is based on the idea that what is spat out resembles the person who spat it.

Penny

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 05:27 PM

Excuse me - YUCK!

Subject: RE: Misspoken, misheard, but accepted.
From: Bert C
Date: 10 Jun 99 - 06:13 PM

One of my pet peeves is how the word "nuclear" comes out something like "nukyuhler". Whether you're for it or against it -- you still should be able to pronounce it!

Bert C