Word Goulash: Ya Cull Det A Noife?

dilettante

dilettante

Well-known Member
Location
Michigan
Cants, dialects, accents, non-native speakers, we get it all. At least commercial aviation standardized on one. Otherwise... can you imagine? Still, monitoring the air band for international flights can yield some funny attempts. The affected John Waynes and 1970s CB Radio Truckers might be the funniest.

Then add in text-speak, "misheard lyrics" that distort phrases among the unread who learn by ear, and every generation of teens.

Do you have any examples the make you chuckle, drive you bats, or have you shaking your head?
 

aggro

Drives me nuts. Sometimes seems to be used to mean "aggressive" but more often as a noun, like I don't know, a sack of aggro? Aggression?

"I just can't deal with those teachers. I don't have to take that aggro, my Mom knows I'm a genius. She's always told me so."
 
Misheard lyrics are called 'mondegreens'.

In a 1954 essay in Harper's Magazine, Sylvia Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the seventeenth-century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O' Moray". She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o' Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
The correct fourth line is, "And laid him on the green". Wright explained the need for a new term:
 
That reminds me of one of my sisters. We had an Aunt Helen, who (along with her family) lived down a long path crossing a field from our Grandparent's house.

I don't recall the details, but we laughed about this for years: one day in front of company my sister blurted out "They ran clear to Helen Gone!"

She was utterly baffled by the consternation of the adults present and the punishment which ensued.
 
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