Mind Groans
Last week I wrote about "ear accidents", the occasional problem I have in which my mind scrambles to make sense of something it mishears, thereby scrambling the meaning of what was said. Although "ear accidents" is a useful phrase, it struck me as more a description than a name for the phenomenon. Now I'd like to propose a name: Mind Groans.
Today, while enjoying my lunch at Taco Bell (no green onions, of course), I did not particularly enjoy listening to the Musak program present its unusually insipid cover version of "The Christmas Song" ("Chestnuts roasting…&c.", a song I've never much cared for anyway) — fortunately, I don't know who the woman was performing it, so I needn't mention her name. Anyway, one of the lyrics misfired in my ear and the line ended up in my mind as something to do with "bathrooms", which I don't remember ever hearing Mel Torme singing about.
Although I didn't spend the time to complete the lyric with something that might make some sort of twisted sense, this was almost an example of what is known as a "Mondegreen", the "mishearing (usually accidental) of a phrase in such a way that it acquires a new meaning." Typically, "Mondegreen" is associated with the mishearing of song lyrics, and it is itself a mondegreen.
So, while listening to this tedious performance and thinking about ear accidents and suffering my own near-mondegreen, and thinking about the close relationship between mondegreens and ear accidents in everyday spoken discourse, my mind slipped a bit to the side of "mondegreen" and settled in at the similar sounding "mind groan".
Well, I thought, that seemed an appropriate way to arrive at a new phrase to describe ear accidents with hearing the spoken word. "Mind groan", in addition to being a sort of ear accident itself — although it took place entirely silently in my own mind — is closely related to the "eggcorn", in which cliches, already nearly devoid of useful meaning, slip unnoticed into complete meaninglessness via a sort of mondgreen process. However, there might be some dispute whether "mind groan" is really an eggcorn, since it is in no way accidental or unintentional.
"Mind groan" does, however, make a sort of sense to describe its phenomenon in a bad-pun sort of way, and what could be more appropriate than that?
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on Saturday, 9 December 2006 at 17.24
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You come up with some remarkable insights. At Taco Bell, yet.
As for "The Christmas Song," I'm a fan. Torme's version is very good, IMO, but Nat King Cole's is the absolute best. It's closely followed by the creation a few year's back of a duet version with his daughter, Natalie.
on Monday, 11 December 2006 at 13.52
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I'm chalking it up to a matter of taste — about "The Christmas Song" that is. In an abstract way I believe it's a good song, and I understand people's respect for Mel Torme's artistry and creativity, but I don't like listening to him myself. I feel much the same way about Mozart: certainly in the pantheon of great composers, but I generally find his music tiresome — but not all of it, somehow. I adore the Symphonia Concertante (for violin & viola) for no apparent reason.