speaking

I consistently misheard "Dracula" as "Jack Lear" and that's who I was every Halloween until the third grade. I also believed that "The United States of America" was both spoken and spelled as one long word, and I spelled it phonetically for all of the 1st grade.

r. lacher

When I asked my father the meaning of the word "peon," he said it was something that you would "pee on." Like an idiot, I not only believed this well into my teens, but was only corrected after I announced it to my whole physics class.

Anon

My grandmother was fond of proverbs and would often say "you know what they say..." or "they say that..." When I was little I came to the conclusion that "they" were a group of people in an offfice somewhere, whose job was to sit around all day coming up with sayings and proverbs.

Andrew

When I was about five or so I overheard my uncle talking about how something cost him "50 bucks." I asked him what bucks were, and he said "dollars," but I thought he said "dolls." For the longest time I couldn't figure out what my uncle was doing with a bunch of dolls and why anyone wanted to give him stuff for them.

Matt

A friend of mine got into an argument with this metalhead guy. The metalhead guy thought the expression "play it by ear" was actually "play it by air." Personally, I don't know where "ear" comes from, but "air" sounds even more stupid. He was 18 at the time.

Matt

Because my grandfather spoke very quietly and very gravelly, I came to believe that we were born with a limited supply of speech and if we used it all up we'd be mute at the ends of our lives. I began trying to conserve words, as though they were a limited resource.

shacker

As a little girl, I called windshield wipers "heeter skeeters". To this day, my parents have no clue where that came from.

electrawomyn

When much younger, I took words very literally. Imagine my young male horror when, after having been sick for a week, I had to go to a "makeup" class for Tennis.

Pat K.

Until about a year ago I thought the word "misled" was pronounced like "mistle-d" (as in 'mistletoe'). It was the past tense of the verb "to misle". I am not sure how the lightning of truth finally struck and I realized it was mis-LED.

Anon

I started a new job, and there was a guy name Eddie Portorica (who I did not know). When ever someone wanted Eddie they would call over the loud speaker for him. For the longest time I always thought they were saying "Any Puerto Rican" call this number. I always thought that there was a group there that were from Puerto Rico... Until I finally meet Eddie

ANON

In my neighborhood growing up, all the older people were refugees and they all had thick accents. I thought that when people got "old", they began to speak with accents.

Rod

For years I heard the expression "black as the ace of spades" as "black as the ace of SPACE!" I finally learnt the truth when we were sat down at dinner and I challenged my Dad with "how do you know, have you ever been there?" when he said the aforementioned expression!

G

I used to believe that the word "albeit" was pronounced "al-bait." It wasn't until I looked it up in the dictionary that I learned that is a contraction of "all be it!"

G

As a child, I had a hard time understanding why you had to give the store clerk "tacks" with the money. I also thought it was unfair that "miners" could not buy beer.

Jack

When I was little I thought there was a bodily fluid that gave people the ability to talk. No one told me this; I came up with it on my own. I thought that every time a person talked, some of the fluid would be used up, and once it ran out, they would never be able to talk again.

Daniel

When I was young, I didn't know my language was called, "English". I thought it was called, "Normal". When the gardner at my grandma's house would speak strangely in words I'd never heard before, I'd ask him why he didn't speak, "Normal". He'd laugh and say it was called, "Spanish". Sometimes when he'd speak in Spanish to his co-workers, I'd watch his lips & tounge, but only from a distance, because I was afraid his tounge might fly out from moving so fast!!

Zac C.

I used to think that a Freudian slip was an apron women in the middle ages wore.

Emily

When I was three or so, I thought "volley ball" was pronounced 'bally-ball'....cracked everyone up.

Brooke

When I was little we used to take trips to Cape Cod. I was just learning how to read at the time, and I would see the word and not realize that the "e" was silent, so to me, it was "Cape-a Cod." The worst part was that it took my parents about 2 years to notice that I wasn't saying the name right. When they corrected me, I was in shock! It altered my sense of reality.

brookie