Mondegreen
Etymology
Coined by the writer Sylvia Wright in a 1954 essay, from her childhood mishearing of the Scottish ballad line "laid him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen." An eponym for a character who never existed.
noun · /MON-dih-green/
A misheard word or phrase, especially a misheard song lyric.
What it names
The exact word for the private, often better line your ear invents — handy whenever you want to name that gap between what was sung and what you swore you heard.
Example
For years she sang the mondegreen "the ants are my friends" in place of Dylan’s "the answer, my friend."
Related idea
Close kin to the eggcorn, but a mondegreen stays a mishearing, often nonsensical; an eggcorn reshapes the misheard phrase into something that makes its own logical sense.
See also