The Ants Are My Friends: Misheard Lyrics, Malapropisms, Eggcorns, and Other Linguistic Gaffes

Do you take things for granite? Do you need a secretary at your beckoned call? In The Ants Are My Friends—delightfully misheard from Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind"—Martin Toseland has collected the very best, and very worst, linguistic gifts of the gaffe. Examples have been plucked gleefully from three categories of blunders: malapropisms—named after Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan's play The Rivals where the wrong word pops out to bizarre results; eggcorns—where a new word is created from misheard real one (the name comes from someone misunderstanding "acorn" as "eggcorn," as it has the same shape); and of course mondegreens, or misheard lyrics, a rich vein of accidental invention. Such classic mondegreens are collected as Ray Parker Jr.'s "Who Ya Gonna Call, Gus Foster," Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams are Made of Cheese," Roy Orbison's "Only Baloney," AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done with Sheep," and Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tangerine Man."