" Olive, the other reindeer"; was Re: "Trolling" for "Trawling": An Eggcorn?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 2, 2007, at 3:05 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> This has got to be a joke, not a trfue misunderstanding, as the
> relevant lines are,
>
>   "All of the other reindeer,
>   Used to laugh and call him names.
>   THEY wouldn't let poor Rudolph
>   Play in any reindeer games."
>
>   Even if your own name is Olive, and all your female relatives are
> named Olive, and your favorite character is Olive Oyl, you will
> understand "all of" as  meaning "all of," at least if your
> attention span is long enough to get to the operative pronoun.

i have no idea how it originated, but mondegreens sometimes aren't
globally -- only locally -- well-formed.  they typically occur in
lyrics/poetry/quotes/etc., where listeners tend to expect bizarre
expressions.

in this particular case, who knows?

it ended up as a title of a children's book and a 1999 tv special
derived from the book, by the way.

arnold

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