听岔的歌词——把「把他放倒在绿草地上」听成「还有蒙德格林夫人」：错得比原句还动人，于是错出了一个词条。 A misheard lyric — "laid him on the green" heard as "Lady Mondegreen": wrong, lovelier than the truth, and finally in the dictionary.
A misheard lyric — "laid him on the green" heard as "Lady Mondegreen": wrong, lovelier than the truth, and finally in the dictionary. 听岔的歌词——把「把他放倒在绿草地上」听成「还有蒙德格林夫人」：错得比原句还动人，于是错出了一个词条。
词源etymology
苏格兰民谣《默里伯爵》唱道：They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray, / And laid him on the green （他们杀了默里伯爵，把他放倒在绿草地上）。 小赖特听成了 And Lady Mondegreen——伯爵身边凭空多出一位陪他殉难的夫人。 1954 年 11 月，她在《哈泼斯》杂志写下这桩童年误会， 顺手用误会本身，给天下的误会起了名。
The Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl o’ Moray” sings: They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray, / And laid him on the green. Young Sylvia Wright heard And Lady Mondegreen — conjuring a noblewoman to die at the Earl’s side. In November 1954 she confessed the childhood mishearing in Harper’s Magazine, and named all the world’s mishearings after her own.
背景the story
赖特的立场是这个词条的灵魂：她拒绝改正——蒙德格林夫人已经陪伯爵死过一次， 不能再被一行正确的歌词杀死第二次。错版必须比原版好，才配叫 mondegreen。
词典进程走了半个世纪：兰登书屋 2000 年收录，OED 2002 年，MW 2008 年—— 一次听岔，五十四年后领到正式户口。传唱最广的现代例子是亨德里克斯那句 “kiss the sky”，被几代人听成 “kiss this guy”。
Wright’s stance is the soul of the entry: she refused the correction — Lady Mondegreen had already died once beside her Earl and would not be killed a second time by an accurate lyric. The wrong version must beat the right one to deserve the name.
The dictionaries took half a century: Random House in 2000, the OED in 2002, MW in 2008 — one mishearing, granted formal papers fifty-four years later. The most widely sung modern specimen is Hendrix’s “kiss the sky,” heard by generations as “kiss this guy.”
中文里的邻居neighbors in chinese
中文管这件事叫「空耳」——但这个词是向日语借的（空耳，そらみみ）。 英语自己造了 mondegreen，汉语给听岔的歌词安家，用的至今是日语的壳。 脾气也不同：空耳是玩法，故意往岔里听，图一个好笑； mondegreen 是事故，无意听岔，而且常常更美。 一个是段子手，一个是蒙德格林夫人。
Chinese calls this 空耳 — a loan from Japanese (soramimi). English coined its own mondegreen; Chinese, to this day, houses misheard lyrics in a borrowed Japanese shell. The temperaments differ too: 空耳 is a game — mishearing on purpose, played for laughs; a mondegreen is an accident — unintended, and often more beautiful than the truth. One is a comedian; the other is Lady Mondegreen.
The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original.这类东西我此后就叫它蒙德格林——反正没别人给它们起过名字。要紧的是：它们比原句更好。 西尔维娅·赖特 Sylvia Wright · 《蒙德格林夫人之死》 The Death of Lady Mondegreen · 1954
Every carol service produces a fresh crop of mondegreens in the back pews. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation Her best mondegreen survived three decades intact, until a lyrics site ruined it in four seconds. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation 词典词（MW／OED），语言写作的常客。 写歌词、写儿时误会、写「错得更好」的东西都合用； 提它就把赖特那句立场带上——这个词不只指错听，还替错听辩护。
A dictionary word (MW/OED), a regular in writing about language. Fits lyrics, childhood mishearings, and everything wrong-but-better; when you cite it, bring Wright’s verdict along — the word doesn’t just mean the mishearing, it argues for it.