language: speaking

when i was a kid i thout that the word BELON was a expression to say that someone was dirty but one day i was with my parents and , when i was eating my dad told me " are u a BELON or what " and i asked him what this word meant so he told me that the name BELON was the last name of his neibors when he was a kid. He told me that his neibors were really nice but always dirty with stains on them and a dirty house

I didn't get the saying "waste not, want not" meant, as I didn't know "want" could mean "lack" and only knew of it as in "desire", so I thought the saying meant "If you don't want stuff you won't be wasteful", which obviously doesn't make sense.

From the first six letters of this word, I thought that “megalomania” had something to do with megalodons.

I used to believe gibberish was a real language from a country from gibberland

I thought that camouflage was actually "camelflage", and had something to do with camels!

When I was young I used to believe that everybody on this planet was speaking the same language.
When I was five years old, I travelled in (La Réunion)(a french island) since everybody was speaking french I thought that french was the international language. Two month later I travelled to Paris and I asked someone what time was it and he didn't answer me. So I was surprised. And i thought he was being rude. After this I travelled to Portugal and before the travel my mom told me that Portuguesse people was speaking another language. I was speachless.

This is something my brother thought: when we were kids we once went on this camping trip to a lake with dad. At one point we saw this presentation about the history of the lake, and the person giving the presentation mentioned how the Native American tribe that once lived there had shamans that could put a curse on someone "through powers of suggestion". The next morning, I remember my brother was talking to my dad about it and he asked how you could put a curse on someone by "considering (???) something".

I thought the expression "so funny I forgot to laugh" was literal instead of sarcastic

When I was little I thought a widow was someone who stares at you through a window

When I was little I used to believe that URDU is the most spoken language in the world

When grown-ups said "this morning", I thought they were saying "tiss morning"
When grown-ups said "newspaper", I thought it was two words: "new" and "spaper"
But really, my hearing is okay.

I used to believe that cosmic was the same word as cosmetic and wondered how stuff in space was related to makeup and beauty products.

I found the term "mad scientist" confusing, as I didn't know that "mad" could also mean crazy, so I was left wondering what all these scientists were so pissed off about.

Both my parents worked at a hospital, my mom as an ICU nurse, my dad as a biomed tech (fixed hospital equipment). I overheard a lot of hospital gossip because both my parents worked at the same place. Usually it was about doctors. I remember being maybe five or six and I heard my parents talking about some doctor being a "womanizer". This was a word I'd never heard before, but given the medical context, I assumed the logical thing: that he was a doctor who turned men into women (which was something I vaguely knew was possible).

So every year, my parents would take us to the company picnic and they had like a little mini carnival with (crappy) rides, a petting zoo, clowns, live music and a barbecue. Fun stuff. One year I befriended this little girl at the company picnic. Eventually she mentioned that her dad is the same doctor who my mom had called a womanizer. I suddenly got very scared that he was going to find me and "womanize" me. Naturally, I assumed he'd done the same to my new friend, being that she was a girl and I all, so I felt very bad for her. Anyway, I was an idiot.

I thought the phrase "In the midsts of" was "in the MISTS of", since it was like you were surrounded by mist and couldn't see anything outside.

When I was little, I heard of someone having a "short fuse" and thought it meant a short memory and that the person was very forgetful.