Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 23:16:46 EDT
From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU
Subject: Re: Mondegreens
Rima McKinzey writes:
"pullet surprise" is what many of us call Mondegreens, those mishearings
we've all had at one time or another. This one is a mishearing of
Pullitzer Prize.
Right, as in the possibly apocryphal student examinee who wrote that so-and-so
won a pullet surprise. I've adopted this term for this particular variety of
folk-etymological reanalysis (e.g. four-stair furnace, spitting image) since
coming across it in Fromkin & Rodman, who cite an eponymous compilation. I
don't know if there's a term for the orthographic variety (e.g. shoe-in).
Larry