speaking

Having been taught phonics in grade school, I believed I could sound out virtually any word. The Plymouth dealership sign across from my uncle's home made me think they must use plywood to make the front end.

Dr. Winkler

When I was little I used to think that the line "rubber baby buggy bumpers" meant that the baby was rubber.

laf

I believed that babies spoke their own language, that only mothers could understand (the product of watching mothers trying to guess at what their children wanted when they cried, I guess). Once, when a family friend was at our house with her baby, who was babbling away, I asked my mom to translate for me. I guess she was too busy to talk with me, so she just kept saying "I don't know what he's saying." It was a while before someone explained to me that babies don't actually talk yet.

Char

I was a very quiet child. That's because I believed I would wear out my vocal cords whenever I talked and I had to save them for when I was older.

Bel Seslaf, Brazil

I thought the word economical was actually two words: eek and omical.

Nancy M.

I used to believe that 'hospital' was pronounced hos-pill-til, because that's where you got medicines and pills to make you better!

I also remember seeing the word 'Mom' written in a book, and thinking that it was a mis-spelling (in the UK we say 'Mum'), not realising that Mom is American.

Kirstenie

my former colleague, david neilsen, used to belive that there was a nomadic dwelling - perhaps like a yurt - called a "purpose". he inferred this from a figure of speach which he took to mean "what i'm about to say is so obvious it's known by all nomads". the idiom in question was "to all in tents and purposes...."

stuart Swanston

As a child my mother would warn my sister and me that "If you don't stop that I'll spifflicate you". Whe nI was young, I thought spifflicate meant spank or punish. When I got older (in my teens) I thought it was just a word she made up to frighten us. Recently (in my twenties) I actually looked it up (trying to prove to someone it was ont a word) and found that spifflicate IS in the dictionary and it means to KILL!! Now I'll bear psychological scars the rest of my life because I discovered that my mother had been treatening to kill me when I was naughty. I confronted her with this once and she just laughed at me. She KNEW what the word meant!!!! 

proto-sybill 

When my younger sister was really small (maybe 5), she got in the habit of calling me a 'stupid fuck'. One time, she said that to me and my mom walked in. My mom wasn't exactly happy hearing my sister say that, and to avoid her own embarrassment, she made me tell my sister what 'fuck' meant. Apparently my sister just thought it was another term for a person, but not a 'bad' word. That was the last time she's ever called me that. 

Anon

I used to think "so-and-so" was a bad word. My mom would be talking to a friend and say something like, "That guy's a little so-and-so!" She would whisper it so I though "so-and-so" was a bad word. However, she was saying "so-and-so" instead of the bad word she really wanted to say.

Amy

When I was little, I watched "All in the Family". I didn't understand "before" could also mean "in front of", so when Rob Reiner would say "All in the Family was filmed before a live audience", it confused the heck out of me.

Gardenwife

My mother used to complain she "couldn't get a word in edgewise". I thought "that's ok, none of us speak Edge-a-wise."

diane

I used to believe that the phrase "Indian Summer" referred to some sub-continental practice of gift giving. Like they give you a gift that you keep for a while and give back.

I only recently (like past 3 years) realized that the Indian referred to was the american Indian and the people taking the gift back were the Whites - ie Oklahoma!

Anon

I thought the phrase "make ends meet" was "make ends meat." I thought it was some particular kind of meat or a dish made with this meat that people who were poor or having difficulties would prepare.

kate

a rather talkative 4 year old, my sister told me that after so many words i would run out of speech. i thought that one day i would just open my mouth and no sound would come out. my parents found it very odd that for about a week, i didn't have much to say (in an effort to conserve my words) and finally got to the root of the problem.

evie

In elementary school, my neighbor told me that "several" meant seven. So if she said she had several Barbies, it meant she had seven of them.

She was also the one who told me that only women whose husbands have died could use the title Ms. instead of Mrs. or Miss. This is how people knew if you were widowed or not.

I believed her until I mentioned it to one of my teachers.

Jennifer