For me it is Mondegreen: which is a misheard lyric, word or phrase that becomes popular and gives it new meaning.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 11 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

I once did something sort of like this.

Back in the early days of the internet, I was on IRC playing trivia. Often people would talk about wag or wagging. I didn't know exactly what it meant but I'm pretty good at inferring from context clues... usually.

They asked a Star Wars question and of course I knew it right away. I realized in the moment I was practically wagging in anticipation of being correct and I announced it as my first wag.

Of course, wag stood for wild ass guess so I had gotten the meaning completely backward. It still haunts me to this day, some 35+ years later, even though no one but me probably knew about my mistake.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments