For me it is Mondegreen: which is a misheard lyric, word or phrase that becomes popular and gives it new meaning.

  • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    I once did something sort of like this.

    Back in the early days of the internet, I was on IRC playing trivia. Often people would talk about wag or wagging. I didn’t know exactly what it meant but I’m pretty good at inferring from context clues… usually.

    They asked a Star Wars question and of course I knew it right away. I realized in the moment I was practically wagging in anticipation of being correct and I announced it as my first wag.

    Of course, wag stood for wild ass guess so I had gotten the meaning completely backward. It still haunts me to this day, some 35+ years later, even though no one but me probably knew about my mistake.