When I was in elementary school, my grandmother told me that if I showed my middle finger to anyone it means that I hated God. So one day I saw a kid on the bus hold up his middle finger. I said to my friend, "he hates God." She was confused.

Tiffy

I believed till probably about 11 years that the word "hassle" was profanity, from my father's livid use of it at one time. I think I confused it with a similar sounding word.

Ambrosia

When i was a little girl my mum heard me say a really bad word. She told me that it was ok to say this word even though it wasn't very nice but under no circumstances could i say the word redsocks. So from then on whenever i wanted to swear i said redsocks it wasn't until i was about 18 that my friend asked me why i kept on saying redsocks? i was soooo mad at my mum for making me look stupid

*$!@?

This wasnt me (it was me and my uncle wen dey were little)

My Uncle we are talking bout here is the youngest out of 4 boys. And my mum was the youngest out of 3 girls. Well since my 2 aunties were too busy in their lives my mum was stuck looking after him. My uncle would swear 24/7 even if my grandad threatened to take off his belt and smack him with it across the back side! so one day my mum said "I know an even worse word u can use, its worser than f**k, its worse than sh*t. Can u guess wot it is?" so of course he thinks about it, so with that my mum says "dont tell anyone!" he nodds his head, and my mum goes "........Turnip!" Of course my uncle being young, immature and gullible every time he wanted to call someone a nasty rude word he would always call them a turnip...this happened until he realised that turnip was a vegetable not a swear word.

Polly Dolly

Up until I was about ten, I thought that the ultimate insult was to scream "Chicken Pot Pie!" out of a window, with the blinds closed (especially bad if it was a fat person).

Why? I don't know.

Jessica Tinch

I used to think that "Hitler" was a bad word. I would say "Hit" and then spell out the rest of the name in fear of saying a curse word!

M.

my parents belived in teaching me good grammer. So they told me that arn't is a bad word. So when ever a kid said it I would tell the teacher. My parents thought it was funny.

Krissy

My sister told me that if you stuck your INDEX finger up it was swearing-so I went round doing that to everyone!

ella

When I was a little kid I was told by some religious person that swearing would make God put a curse on you, but if you were a child, God would forgive you, but when you got older and sweared, God would give you consequences. I believed then that if you cursed when you were over the age of ten, God would electricute you and you would die on the spot. :O However, if you were nine and under, he'd forgive you, but you'd be warned and watched for a long time.

Anon

I know a kindergartener who thinks that "Dude" is the worst word ever. She was very upset when one of her classmates said "Dude!!"

Pear

When I was very young, almost six, one of my older cousins left a copy of Huckelberry Finn at my house. I started to read it and was puzzled when Huck told Tom about his life with the Widow Douglas.

To paraphrase, he said that he had to cuss for ten minutes just to get the taste back. My grand mother had always told me that if we kids said bad words or talked back that our tongues would turn black and shrivel up and fall right out of our heads.

Well, I wanted to know what it tasted like to cuss anyhow, so one morning after every one else had gotten up, I went upstairs and said every bad word I could think of. Needless to say, I didn't get any taste from it, just a bad case of the guilt and fear that I would wake up one morning and my tongue would be lying on my pillow beside me.

Marie

When I was 7 i was in the car with my dad, mum, nan and grandad. I turned to my grandad and said "grandad, are you a bastard?"
(I'd overheard some teenage lads yelling at some old guy calling him a bastard earlier that day so I'd become increasingly curious as the day progressed)
you should have seen his face! haha
childhood naivety is so funny lol
my parents still tease me about it to this day

Anon

My younger sister saw South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut when she was 4 years old. As most of you know, that movie was VERY, VERY profane. Being only four and believing that animated movies were kid movies, she must of thought all the swear words they said in that movie weren't really bad. So...you can see what happened. Oh God, you should of seen my mom when she caught her singing "Uncle F***er".

Shayna

When I was in seventh grade, I heard the word "decapitated" for the first time. I didn't know what it meant, but I thought it sounded cool, so I went around using it. I had a really mean gym teacher, and she did something that really made me mad. I blurted out that she was decapitated because I thought it was something you could say instead of cussing. I found out the hard way what it meant when she put me in detention and dragged me to the guidance counselor like I was some kind of terrorist.

keyboardplayer

I used to think that "damn" was a really bad swear word, but it was in one of my favorite songs at the time, "The Search is Over" by Survivor. I was shocked but rather excited by the badness of this, and I used to play it really loud and sing along in front of my mother, just to see what kind of reaction it would get out of her. She didn't notice at all. I wasn't sure if I felt triumphantly naughty or just disappointed.

Anon

When I was about 8 or so, I was listening to talk radio in the car when the speaker was talking about an "n-word." Gasp! I thought I knew all the swear words. I asked my Mom what it was and she lied saying she didn't know. I thought I could figure it out. I rattled of a bunch of made-up words starting with "n." I wasn't very creative. They were words like, "nit" and "nuck."

Caitriona

When I was in third grade, our teacher had left the room for a minute and left me "in charge" of taking names while she was gone. Well, all was well until I told the teacher that a girl said a bad word. She asked me what she said and I told her "the B-Word!" The girl got in trouble and had to write sentences. All for saying "Butt"!

Christi T

Up until about the age of 8 I was convinced that the f-word actually was the word Faroono ... yes I now know that, that isn't the word nor is a word at all. But for some unexplained reason I thought this when I was younger ... and of course I never thought to clarify it with my parents because I didn't want to get in trouble for saying the f-word to them...

Anon

i believed the f-word was fart until i was about 8.

Kendra

When I was little my dad told me that it wasn't nice to say butt. So one day in the car my dad was talking and he said "...but I had to" After hearing this, I immediatly said, "Daddy don't say Butt, it's a bad word." He then had to explain to me that there were two kinds of but(t)s. hmm..?

but or not two butts that is the question...?