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
When I was two or three, I heard the term "human beings" and was convinced we were all "human beans". I didn't really understand how humans could be associated with beans, because green beans and lima beans don't look anything like humans.
When I was about 5 or 6, I would always wear bike shorts when I wore skirts, because I get paranoid about things pretty easily. Well, I also liked to use big words (to which I rarely knew the definition of) to make me sound smart. I'd recently heard the word 'obsessed,' but didn't know what it meant. One night, my babysitter came over. She noted the biker shorts I had on, to which I replied "Well, I'm obsessed with people seeing my underwear." She just sat there and stared...
I used to believe that fire drills were real drills and there were also drills for grapes or monkeys and even mutant mole people.Boy was I dumb!
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In 2nd grade i thought that "She's smrter than she looks" was a compliment. I learned I was wrong when I said that to my teacher.
I had heard the phrase "the thrill of the hunt" for quite sometime, thinking each time I was hearing "Attila the Hun". People were saying for example, what someone did for "the thrill of the hunt". I wondered why someone was doing the thing in question for Attila the Hun. In time I finally figured out the phrase "the thrill of the hunt".
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My mother used to say we could buy a new house or car when her ship came in.
I believed that it was out at sea crossing the ocean. I am still waiting.
As I child, I somehow got the idea that "bellow" meant manure. I began to find out otherwise when one time I baffled some people by saying, "Oops, I stepped in some cow bellow!"
When I was about 7 the movie "Titanic" came out. My parents took me to go see and there's a scence where Leonardo DiCaprio is describing an encounter he had with a one-legged prostitue. Naive me didn't know what a prostitute was and just assumed it was a pretty lady. Later that day my parents and I were leaving from a diner and I said very loudly "Look mommy! I'm a one-legged prostitute!" as I hopped around on one leg. I thought I was being very clever so I said this quite loudly so everyone in the diner heard. My parents quickly told me to be quiet as they rushed me out of the diner.
My niece believed that if you touched a cactus plant, you would get “porked” and proceeded to tell me so loudly on a city bus. It was very difficult to explain to her that the correct word was “pricked” while everyone on the bus was howling with laughter.
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When i was little i used to think the word "Under" was "Behunder" so my mom would ask "Nick, where are my keys" and i would say "Behunder the couch mommy"
I thought "spam" and "sperm" were the same thing. What confused me most was that it was sold in tins at the grocery store and that you could recieve it over the internet.
When I was younger, I learnt 'big' words like "beurocrat" & "homicide". I wasn't exactly sure what these words meant, but I felt smart saying them and PRETENDING to know.
One day, I told someone that "democracy" and "suicide" meant the same thing.
Sounds pretty accurate to me...
When I was little and I heard that someone was "on the wagon," that they were actually sitting on a wagon somewhere. The reason people would "fall off the wagon" is because it either got too crowded, or they got into a fist fight and were pushed. It made a lot more sense when I learned it was a euphamism for quitting drinking.
When I was a kid, my Dad used to say "this room looks like a bombsitit" when our bedroom was untidy. I never knew what a bombsitit was & if Dad was angry - it wasn't a good time to ask! It wasn't until I was about twelve, that I realised he was saying "this room looks like a bomb has hit it"! (We live in South London, England - which explains Dad's accent)
I used to think English was a forgein language. I would ask my parents over and over how to say words in English and get so frustrated when they would say the same word back to me.
When I was in 5th grade, I mixed up the words 'facility' and 'faculty'. Faculty meant bathroom, of course, since thats what the faculty bathroom was labeled, and for some reason I knew that it was a bathroom. Our music department held a 'Faculty Concert' and my teacher was going to be in it, so, even though I was confused, I went. On the way there I expressed my confusion to my mom about why it was called a bathroom concert.
I got my definitons mixed up. When I was in high school I thought fornicator was another word for liar. So when my friends and I would joke and they'd lie about something I would yell out FORNICATOR, YOU FORNICATOR! Everyone would look ofcourse to see who'd fornicate in public.
I suppose the word I was looking for was fabricator.
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I used to think an Orgasm and Organism were the same thing. Imagine my embarrassent in biology lessons.
For years I convinced myself that I had invented the word "stereotypical" and was really pleased at how much it had caught on. A little part of me still believes this. I haven't had proof it was around before 1975...
When I was a child, I heard the term Blackmail. So I ask my mother. She told me it was a letter that was in a black envelope. Ok, not going to argue. It came back to haunt me when my child asked me the same thing, and of course, I gave him the same answer my mother gave me.