THERE is something consoling about Web pages that collect ''mondegreens.'' Sites featuring these often hilarious examples of misheard song lyrics offer proof, at last, that botching the words to popular songs is a nearly universal human failing. Rest assured: a quick glance through the lyrical mishaps to be found on such sites is sure to reveal a mondegreen far sillier than any you have sung in the shower.

How about this one: ''Hold me closer, Tony Danza'' (correct lyric: ''Hold me closer, tiny dancer,'' from Elton John's ''Tiny Dancer''). Or this: ''The girl with colitis goes by'' (correct lyric: ''The girl with kaleidoscope eyes,'' from the Beatles' ''Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds'').

According to the word watcher William Safire of The New York Times, the term mondegreen dates from a 1954 magazine article by Sylvia Wright in which she said she had misheard the folk lyric ''and laid him on the green'' as ''and Lady Mondegreen.'' But it remained relatively obscure until its recent adoption by Web sites. The 1954 article employed the term to refer to any aural misinterpretation of a song, hymn, aphorism, advertising slogan, and the like. But on the Net, it applies almost exclusively to misheard lyrics, especially in rock songs.

More than 1,300 bungled lyrics have been submitted by Web visitors to the mondegreen archive Kiss This Guy (www.kissthisguy.com). The name of the archive is taken from perhaps the most famous rock mondegreen of all: '' 'scuse me while I kiss this guy'' for '' 'scuse me while I kiss the sky,'' from ''Purple Haze'' by Jimi Hendrix. That mishearing has been so prevalent, legend has it, that Mr. Hendrix himself would occasionally stop and kiss a guy after singing this line in concert.