speaking
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I used to believe that a "punch line" meant a line of people waiting to dip punch from a punch bowl.
Sheila
I used to be confused on how I was to respond when I asked someone, "do you mind if I blah blah blah?" Some people would be like, "no go right ahead!" While others would say, "yes do what you like!" So I would stand there and be like, "ummm, so can I?"
Keisha
Somewhere down the line of growing up, I lost the 'L' in flashlight. Even now as an adult I still tend to say "fashlight" instead and have to actually think about the word before saying it.
Silverchild
I used to believe that "God bless you" was "gableshu," so everytime someone sneezed, I would say "gableshu."
JS
top belief!
When I was little and used to try to explain things I was thinking to my dad, he used to tell me to "be more specific". I thought he was saying "be more Pacific" so I thought that people who lived over the ocean must be really good at explaining stuff.
Tam
My brother thought that truce was truths.
"Let's make a truths"
Usagi Ohkami
top belief!
I thought sadism involved being sad and depressed. Obvious, I think.
]_]
I used to believe "foyer" meant fireplace because is german feuer [pronounced like foyer] means fire.
I never heard anyone say foyer before, until i was at my grandmas house once. She told me to go wait in the ''foyer'', and i had no idea what she was talking about. I thought she wanted me to wait in the fireplace!!
Kupfer Staub und Feuer
When I was little I thought that "involved" was a dirty word, and would get really embarassed when I heard my parents say it. Since it was my mom I usually heard it from, I thought it was a female private part. I think this is weird, because I was only about 3 or 4 at the time, but now realize that "involved" sounds a lot like "vulva." Coincidence?
Steph
I used to believe that the phrase "Lord, have mercy" was "Lord, how mercy". At the time, I was familiar with the word "mercy" but had no idea what it meant. From the context of what I thought was "Lord, how mercy", I assumed that "mercy" must be an adjective, indicating the presence of lots of "merce" or "merces", whatever merse or merces were. I So I grew to think that "merce" or "merces" denoted a condition of difficult or dreaded circumstances. After all that was the kind of conditions generally being experienced or anticipated by anyone who said (so I thought) "Lord, how mercy!".
Jessica
I used to belive that the English language was made up by two men at the start of the world.Their was one tall and one short and that was why we had the same sounding word meaning different things (e.g. right and write) because they each wanted to call a different thing the same word so the tall one made the short one change the spelling!
Beth
top belief!
Well, as a child, my mother always taught me that when I can't understand a word, to break it down and I'll understand it (I found out later that she was just much too lazy!). So one fine afternoon, I was sitting on my big blue bean bag chair reading the dictionary, and I came across the word 'prostitute'. I didn't know what it was, so I took my mother's advice and didn't even bother to look at the definition. I just broke down the word.
Pro-something you are good at.
stitute- sounds like subsitute.
So it sounded like a very good subsitute in school.
Oh, the look on the poor principals face when my teacher was absent one day, and he came inside the classroom and asked if the teacher was in. (The substitute was inside the closet getting her coat, so he couldn't see her). And I, wanting to sound smart, said, "No! We have a prostitute! She's in the closet!"
Mind you this was in the late 1950's too.
Oh, did I have some fun...
Mary Jones, Jackson, Mississippi
I used to think the 'okay sign' -- when you put your thumb and middle finger together and stick the rest of your fingers up -- was actually a 'monocle sign' and meant that you lost your monocle or something like that. I only wish I could tell you what made me believe this.
Majusca
I used to believe the word "privacy" was considered rude, because my parents explained to me when I was little the reason they shut the bathroom door was for privacy. I thought it pertained to something involving nudity, and even after I learned different, still felt odd saying the word in public for a long time afterwards.
Kathryn
One particular babysitter of mine was comforting me after I became hysterical and was crying over something or other. She started cooing "Calm down, it's okay." Having never heard anyone use the phrase "calm down", I thought she was saying "come down" (as in "come down out of the tree", or off of something high off). I looked up at her and said "Come down from where? I'm not on anything, i'm right here."
Amy
top belief!
When my mum used to pick me up from school I was sometimes announce that I was thirsty, my mum would reply she was friday. I'm from glasgow, scotland - saying thirsty in a loose accent sounds like 'thurstay' ergo 'thursday' so this was my mum's way of gently chastising me for poor enunciation, by replying in an equally nonsensical way.
I didn't realise this til I was 15 - I had assumed Friday was just a way of saying you were hungry....
Andrew
top belief!
When I was young, I went to go see the movie 'Titanic' with my mother. Good idea for a family movie, right? I specifically remember the scene when Jack is showing Rose his sketch book, and the drawings of the one-legged prostitute. I thought 'prostitute' was a fancy word for politician. I thought that she probably wasn’t a very good one if she kept on being naked all the time. The sad thing is, I kept on thinking prostitute=politician until I was a teenager. Of course, now that I'm older I know it’s the other way around.
Not my belief, but my brother's. When he was around 12 and I 14, the subject of foreign accents came up in a discussion. At one point, I mentioned American accents. (We're American.) He looked confused, and said... "What? Americans don't HAVE an accent."
He had been assuming that people from England, Australia, etc. had to go out of their way to talk like that, and that the American accent was just the normal default way of talking.
When I first heard the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" from Alice in Wonderland on tv, I thought the walrus said it was time to talk about "shoes and ships and CEILING wax." I had no idea why anyone would want to wax their ceiling, but I figured it had to be either more Lewis Carroll nonsense or else some kind of obscure ceiling maintenance technique that grownups used.
Amanda M.
"an" is short for "and"
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