the best of speaking
I thought when someone was described as being "mild-mannered" it meant they didn't have very good manners
language: speaking
1,224 beliefs
At 31 I moved from Italy to London, UK. I used to believe that the phrase "out of spit" was a particularly graphic and rather dramatic way of expressing one's animosity and vengeful intententions. Only 8 years later, after moving back to Italy, I eventually realized that one is supposed to say "out of spite".
There's a website called TV Tropes that has a trope called "Heroic BSoD", which means a hero has an emotional breakdown.
Because of this, I thought BSoD was a disorder, like OCD or PTSD, that meant you were prone to emotional breakdowns.
Later, I learnt that it's actually an abbreviation for Blue Screen of Death.
I thought for a long time that the word "awry" was pronounced like "aw-ree" (rhymes with sorry) , instead of "uh-rye". The weird part? I had heard people say it lots of times, but it took ages before I realized it was the same word
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I used to think you could go to jail just by saying a word wrong during a speech.
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I used to think that weasel was short for wooden easel, and was confused as to why someone would be called a piece of art equipment as an insult.
I thought "prison" and "prism" are the same words as each other.
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I used to think that retarded was the same word as retired.
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I used to think that if something was out of the question, then you were banned from asking for it.
When I was 15, I accidentally referred to my baby cousin's Christening as his funeral. Well, at least I found it funny myself.
I used to think headquarters meant somebody's head cut into 4.
I thought the phrase "throw the towel in" had to do with throwing one's swimming towel into the pool/ocean/lake/river.
Stereotypically, I used to think that all Indians used the phrase 'oh my God' in just about every sentence.
Until one of my parents actually used the word out loud, I used to see the word 'deluxe' on my pet rescue game, and thought it was pronounced 'DELCKS-chur'.
I thought that polystyrene was pronounced 'polly-STEE-LEE-an'.
I used to think allegations were made by alligators.
I was little and saw a movie that involved a girl falling into a river. A man exclaimed, "The current is taking her!" and me, being five or six and never having heard of currents, thought he was saying "currant" like blackcurrant.
When I was five or six, I was watching TV (I think it was "The Simpsons") and a character mentioned a piece of paper but I misheard and thought she (I'm pretty sure it was a woman) said, "piece of *vapour*".
When I was younger, I thought the word vinegar was the same as the word vagina, and in year 5, we had a TV crew come to our school, to do a documentary on school dinners, and I said into the microphone, which was turned up quite loud 'well I usually have ketchup or mayonnaise on my fries, but my older brother, in high school, prefers vagina with his'. Needless to say, that part was obviously deleted.
I thought that "Oh, the humanity!" was an exclamation meant for pointing out that something was very humanlike.
I used to think Yiddish was pronounced to rhyme with Swedish.