I believed that all swear words were modern inventions and that someone sat in an office creating them, just like someone else who created jokes, *all* of them.

Lesley

I used to believe there was a legal age limit to swearing.

sarah

I used to believe the word "wow" was a curseword. One day I said it aloud on the playground expecting to get looks from the other kids. I was completely shocked when no one paid much attention.

Anon

There were many crap definitions of rude words flying around my school. Twat was a pregnant goldfish, bastard was a male dog (go figure) and we thought that the worst word in the world sounded like "Rehhnaharn" because an angry Italian bloke once said it to Bugs Bunny in a cartoon.

Anon

I used to believe the words "fart" and "butt" were heavy profanity. I still have trouble saying these words to this day.

Jeff

I used to believe that "dang" was a really bad word and "damn" was the clean word to use. This got me in a lot of trouble with teachers and friends I tattled on for saying "dang".

Beaver Damnit

My dad is a builder and uses alot of colourful language, but had always admonished my brother and I never to copy any of it. However, I could never understand why he would describe someone who was restless and fidgety (especially if in and out of a seat)as "up and down like a horse's drawers." What he'd actually said was "whore's drawers". (drawers are panties if you're american).

mel

one time (about 6ish) i called my brother a bastard. my father overheard, smacked me and said do you know what that word means? no. It's someone who doesn't have a proper daddy. So i thought that a bastard was half-human, half monster.

Geoff

BY age six i was pretty sure i knew all the "bad" words i wasnt suppose to use. So one day while riding in the car a bee flew in the back window and as i was trying to kill it i said "come here you cock sucker!!" I only screamed this once or twice though because it shocked my parents so much the car came to a stop & they just kind of looked at me drop jawed. i got the "what did you jst say?" bit and when i repeated it again was informed it was a bad word...BUT confused (cock was a rooster, sucker was a lolly pop, right?) asked why... and never really got a proper explanation. it wasnt untill years later i figured out what those looks were really all about LOL

J

When we were young, the adults said that the rudest possible word was 'District Nurse'. And we believed them

Steve Haughton

My mother adamantly hates the word 'fart' and growing up we had to replace it with 'glink'. I just thought that was the way everyone said it. Imagine the looks I got when I used it in front of the rest of the normal population!! "Holy cow, that was one loud glink!!"

Jude Horrocks

I know I am only one of many who, as a small child, thought that the worst thing anyone could possibly say was "shut up." When I worked briefly with 4- and 5-year-old kids in 1979, I was amazed to find that there were still kids who thought the same thing!

C.C.

I used to think it was illegal for swear words to appear in print. Then one day, a classmate brought Frederick Forsyth's novel "The Odessa File" to school and showed us a page that had the F word on it. I was shocked but pleasantly surprised to see it, and as we read that sentence to each other, we felt like rebels!

Kdees

In my first year of teaching, I had one of my second graders come up to me and tell me that Johnny had called him the "E" word. Knowing the "A,B,C,D and F" words in their entirety, I had NO idea what the "E" word was. So I asked Johnny to whisper in my ear what the dreaded "E" word was... so Johnny said. "Idiot". I about died laughing on the spot.

Ms. C

My immigrant family tended not to interact very much with neighbors, so I seldom played with kids outside the family. So I thought that the people in my family were the only people in the whold world who knew any "bad words." I couldn't imagine that anyone else knew them, much less would say them.

You can't imagine my shock when I got to college and was living in a dorm with others my age. They knew the very same bad words! And what's more, they actually said them out loud. I couldn't figure out how they had learned them on their own.

naive Washingtonian

When i was young about three or four i use to like kentucky fried chicken but i had torouble getting my tongue around kentucky so i use to ask my grandma if we could go to fucky fried chicken. I think she came close to a heart attack every time i said it

shannon

When i was about three for some reason i called Kentucky Fried Chicken, 'F*cky Fried Chicken Kentucky'... i never knew why my grandpa kept asking me to say what my favorite resterant was.

Britney

When I was about 5, I thought "beer" was a profanity, and (wait for it) smacked a family friend on the lips for saying the word-- I was actually offended! Boy, did he look confused.

Io

I used to think that the word b**ch was a smell. I remember thinking "Aw man that dish rag smells like b**ch. I still know what the smell was too and sometimes when I get a whiff of it that word still pops into my head.

Murf

When I was 4 years old, a rumor was going around the kindergarten class about BAD WORDS (we were such naughty little children). A little boy was sitting next to me during story time one day and whispered in my ear "The F word is FORK!" I still don't know if it was fork he said, or the real word, but that's what I heard and for years I didn't use the word because I was afraid I'd get in trouble...

hannah