MISHEARD 2: We heard from a reader called Jaxx, of Eldred, about our column on misheard lyrics.

“They’re called Mondegreens and they’ve been around probably as long as dictionaries,” he said. “An American writer, Sylvia Wright, coined the name based on an old Scottish ballad her mother read to her as a child. Correctly written as: ‘They’ve slain the bonny Earl and laid him on the green’ was misheard as ‘They’ve slain the bonny Earl and Lady Mondegreen.’

“Hence, Mondegreen. As a teenager we heard the Creedence Clearwater Revival tune correctly written as ‘There’s a bad moon on the rise,’ misheard as ‘There’s a bathroom on the right.’”

That leads us to malaprops, spoonerisms and eggcorns. A malaprop is the use of a word in place of a similar sounding word, with an unintentionally funny effect — “dance the flamingo” instead of the flamenco; fragrantly violated instead of flagrantly violated; and in this famous quote from boxer Mike Tyson: “I guess I’m gonna fade into Bolivian.”

A spoonerism is spoken, with the sounds of two words transposed, often to a humorous effect — runny babbit instead of bunny rabbit, or a famous phrase, “It is kisstomary to cuss the bride.”

They are often just tips of the slung — whoops, slips of the tongue.

An eggcorn is a word or phrase that results from the mishearing or misinterpretation of another, with an element of the original being substituted for one that sounds similar or identical. Some examples: All for not instead of all for naught; all intensive purposes instead of all intents and purposes; chock it up instead of chalk it up; or Cadillac converter for catalytic converter.