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