Wordology, Mondegreen

Mistakes due to mishearing or misunderstanding, are called mondegreens. Most people have at one time or another inadvertently made a mondegreen when singing songs without knowing the correct lyrics. American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper's Magazine in 1954. She got the idea from a poem she misquoted when a child.

"Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
 Oh, where hae ye been?
 They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,
 And Lady Mondegreen."  The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green".

Here is an example: ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song “Purple Haze”, by Jimi Hendrix: “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky”). The title of the animated Christmas show "Olive, the Other Reindeer", is a mondegreen on "all of the other reindeer", a line from the classic Christmas song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".