The Four Strangers
Michelle Malkin notes that
The 2008 update of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition features a fresh crop of new words and phrases that have successfully become part of the mainstream English language through prolonged and widespread usage in a variety of publications.
One of these new entries, mondegreen (”a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung”) has delighted wordplay aficionados for years.
My favorite mondegreen comes from my daughter Erica, when she was in grade school. She was always raving about her favorite TV show, The Four Strangers, at least that’s how it sounded to me. I searched the listings thoroughly, but couldn’t find her show. One day it dawned on me. Her favorite show was The Forest Rangers!
I enjoy them more and more; hearing aids are okay, just that they don’t make up for all lost sounds. I’ve been told by the audiologist that our brain attempts to “substitute on the fly” and often comes up with strange fill in the blank answers while a conversation is taking place.
My granddaughter still calls the hinged part of her arm an “elmo”, just like the muppet character.