speaking

My family has owned a condo for my whole life and one time we were going to visit there my little brother told our teachers that we were going to our condom.

Anon

When i was younger, i had alot of trouble pronouncing the word vagina, i used to think it was Jemima!!! My grandmother who was working for clinpath at the time thought it was hilarious and told all the staff at her work!! They thought it was gold and the vagina swabs were renamed in my honour to jemima swabs!!! i must have been a pretty confused kid watching playschool though!!

Em

for the longest time i didn't know the difference between the word hangover and hangnail. man is that embarassing

confused

i was on a ferry with my family and i saw something in the water. i asked my mom what it was and she said "they're buoys" (she pronounced it 'boys') to which i replied "if they're boys, where's all the girls??!!"

sara

when i was a little kid, i was playing catch for the first time. when i missed a catch, my mom said, "now, keep your eye on the ball!" i grabbed the ball and stuck it directly on my face, right up against my eye!! (that's a case of taking orders too seriously...)

Cammy

One time, my mom said "Come put on your bathing suit." and i heard "come put on your baby suit." And i screamed "NO! I'M NOT A BABY!"

HannahBanana

When I was young I used to think a prostitue was someone that gives you good deals, when I was out shopping I got alot of candy for a sweet deal and turned round to the man and said "Your the best Prostitute ever!" As I left the shop many people looked at me...

Didge

When I was young I always used to mix the word persecute with prostitute. Imagine how alarmed I was when i would hear my pastor talk about how we must be "persecuted" for our faith.

Anon

"I scream!" that is something I like to eat. I was about 10 before I put ice and cream together and figured the word out as it was, "I WANT SOME I SCREAM!"

opinionata

My sister was grammatically correct from the beginnng; when she was in daycare at age 3, she saw that her supervisor (Valerie) had a bruise. She, being a concerned child, stated "Valerie, you have a broo!". Valerie responded, "No, I have a BRUISE". My sister gives her a look of exasperation and says, "No, there's only one of them," much to the surprise of her supervisor.

Amanda

as a kid i was convinced, since i'm not jewish, that "bris" and "brie" were the smae thing. so when i was five i saw my 2 year old cousin reaching out for a piece of brie on a cheese tray, so i yelled, "mom! let's give henry a bris!"

juliet

I used to believe bris was pronounced brisk.
So when it was Passover and my mother said, "I'm making brisk for Passover. . . . " YOu can imagine what happened.

Anon

When I was a little kid we traveled long distances by car--this was in the '40s--and my parents spoke of "living out of our suitcases." I thought they were saying we were living out of our soup cases and I used to look for the cans of soup in our suitcases to no avail.

Ted

When I was a kid, the first time I heard my parents use the word "babysit" I thought they were actually going to find a baby to sit on. When they said it was me they were talking about me, I thought they were going to turn me back into a baby and I wanted to know why I needed to be sit upon.

Linda from Los Angeles

Since the words of the English language obviously needed to have been created at some point in time, I believed that the responsibility of coming up with all of the words rested upon the shoulders of one man. He thought up all of the words after sundown, with a group of his friends helping him along. They sat in his backyard while he played the banjo, and pointed at objects and then decided what to name them.

Amy

In my native language, the word for "scar" is pronounced the same way as the letter "R" (the word for the letter, not the sound). Therefore, I thought for a really long time that if you hurt yourself bad enough you got a big red "R", possibly on your forehead (I don't know where that came from. I suppose I had heard of (obviously not met!) a person who had got a scar on their forehead).

J.

For forty years my family has reminded me about Christmas when I was five years old. A relative who traveled extensively brought blue jeans from Paris as a gift for me. I tried them on, and the family quickly made a big deal of my 'spiffy European pants'. I soon announced to the family that I was wearing my "new spiffy I'm-a-peeing pants".

Phil P.

When I first heard the phrase "survival of the fittest," (probably around age 7 or 8) I had no idea what the word "fittest" meant and believed that people really meant "fattest"! ^_^

Vivienne

I used to see that commercial advertising for the grocery store "Fiesta" when I was little...This lady would always be on the commercials and at the end she would say "FIESTA". I used to think that the lady was pronouncing it wrong and that it was really Fiester. I thought she was just putting some accent flair on the end of the word...I used to correct her out loud. I would say, "No, it's Fiester!!"

Angela