The Ants Are My Friends

A celebration of those who fumble around the edges of the English language, The Ants Are My Friends (delightfully misheard from Bob Dylan's `Blowing in the Wind') is a hilarious compendium of linguistic gifts of the gaffe.Author Martin Toseland has plucked the very best (and very worst) examples from three categories of blunders: malapropisms, where the wrong word just pops out, with bizarre results; eggcorns, when a new word is created by mishearing an existing one; and mondegreens, or misheard song lyrics (a rich vein of accidental invention with such classics as Madonna's `Last Night I Dreamt of Some Bagels' and the Eurythmics' `Sweet Dreams Are Made of Cheese').From Shakespeare's Dogberry and George Sheridan's Mrs Malaprop through to George W. Bush, Del Boy and even Borat, this book celebrates linguistic creativity, capturing the moments when words and phrases are unintentionally `transformationed' into something new and wonderful.