I used to believe that "firearms" meant fire extinguishers, things you use to arm yourself against fires. I couldn't understand why fire extinguishers were illegal in some places.

Vicki J.

when i was a child, i told my brother that "algebra" was a bad word so he would go around saying "algebra" all the time and sound like a moron...i was a deranged sister.

Stephanie

when my grandmother would want my mother to telephone her, she'd always say "Give me a ring". I thought she was literally telling my mother to buy her a ring. Since my mother would always agree, I imagined my grandmother to have some HUGE stash of rings omewhere...

amanda

When we were little my sister and I believed the word Poo to be a rude word but Pooh as in Winnie-the-Pooh was ok. So everytime we said the word Pooh we had to say "H" afterwards or we were being naughty. We used to have terrible arguments when we accused each other of not saying the H. And the song went: "Winnie the Pooh..H, Winnie the Pooh..H" Our parents must of thought we were mad!

Dean

I couldn't understand why no-one had invented a word for something that isn't big but at the same time isn't small so I used to express the concept with the word "little-big" or "big-little". It was a revelation to me when my mother asked me go to the shops for a medium sliced loaf (of bread) and I discovered that someone somewhere had actually solved the problem that was perplexing me at the time.

Lee, England

When i was about 5 years old i used to think 'Splendid' meant horrible, so one day when i left my hat at the park, and we went back to get it to find it gone, i exclaimed: "Maybe a Splendid robber took it!"

Jackson

I remeber sitting in the bath one day contemplating when I was about 4 or 5. I called my Dad into the bathroom and asked, "If lesbians are girls, are leprichauns the boy version of the same thing?" I was puzzled when my Dad fell about laughing. Thinking back, I think the letter 'L' made me think that being gay, you had to have an alternate 'boy' description starting with the same letter, and since Leprichauns were boys...it was logical to me!

lennypops

When I was little and used to try to explain things I was thinking to my dad, he used to tell me to "be more specific". I thought he was saying "be more Pacific" so I thought that people who lived over the ocean must be really good at explaining stuff.

Tam

i used to always wonder how one national guard could always guard the entire nation.

karen ellis

I thought when you were in a cakewalk, you actually had to put your feet in cakes and walk around. I thought this was really gross and cried when my parents wanted me to participate in one at a church picnic.

Mike

When I was about four, I would talk all the time. My grandfather told me that we were all born with a fixed number of words and that I was using mine up too quickly. I was suitably terrified and believed that, in relative silence, for quite some time.

KO

Age 15. Playing a word game with my parents, I got the word 'Lingerie' on my card. Obviously it's only us romantics who like to linger, because they laughed their heads off at my naive pronounciation.

Mark (England)

When we were younger and went on walks my sister always used to get the binoculars wrong. She used to ask my mum to pass her "big nockers" over so she could have a look out of them.

Jack

The first time I ever heard of doing somersaults, I guess it was summer, and I thought somersaults were so called because someone was doing them in the summer. I supposed that if someone did the same thing in the winter, it would be a wintersault. As time went on and I never heard of wintersaults (or springsaults or autumnsaults either, for that matter), I assumed that there was some reason why somersaults were most likely to be done in the summer, hence the name. It seemed to make sense to the extent that summer is associated with outdoor activities, and I'd seen somersaults done primarily outdoors, probably because few people I knew would have had ample room to do them inside their houses.

Wendy

When i was little i used to think that people who stuttered had used up their allotted number of words for the particular word they stuttered on, and could'nt say that word again without difficulty

kwaziwabbit

I used to believe that "priceless" meant the same thing as "worthless". I was quite confused when a TV show mentioned that the fossils in a museum were priceless. Surely, those fossils must be worth SOMETHING...

Adam

When I was very young (less than 10, maybe 6 or 7?) my parents were talking to other adults in the house and they must have been talking about how tired they were. I thought I'd be helpful and popped up with "You should take some laxatives", believing that laxatives would help them relax. Needless to say, everyone was stunned and I felt stupid about this for a long time before I ever actually learned what laxatives are.

BillR

When I was seven, I confused a row of spectators in a movie theater by asking them if the seat next to them was "bacon." I repeated the question several times, thinking they couldn't hear me, unaware that the word I should have used was "vacant."

S.E.

I used to believe that I actually invented the word "excellent".

poop jacket

I used to think that 'approximately' meant exactly, so, for example, I would describe something as 'approximately 3.2cm' with a clear emphasis on the first syllable to enhance the exactness. This went on into my early twenties I think...

eejit