language: speaking

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!

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.

In my family, before leaving the dinner table, one was required to ask, "May I be excuse?" I never quite heard anyone right when they said it, and for years and years I mumbled something like "May-beg-screws?" until I finally figured it out.

I used to believe…

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.

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.

I thought when you were in a cakewalk, you actually had to put your feet in cakes and walk around. I thought this was really gross and cried when my parents wanted me to participate in one at a church picnic.

My freshman year at Georgia Tech there was a celebrity basketball
game between the Playboy Bunnies and the school's coaches.
After the game the bunnies were chatting with the huge crowd of
young men; some sitting on other's shoulders to see better. One
such fellow, being overwhelmed by thier sexyness, I presume,
bellowed out "I think I'm going to have an organism".

I pronounced "adolescent" as uh-DOLE-sent once and my mother cracked up after figuring out what I was saying.

Also around this same time in my life, I pronounced "adirondack" as uh-DEAR-on-dack. Mom again got a good laugh. However, while at my condo complex's pool this summer, I heard a woman in her 30s pronounce the word the same way. I felt superior, as I had learned the proper pronunciation years ago.

In fifth grade, I asked my teacher what the word "ambition" means. I must have pronounced it incorrectly, or she was trying to lead me into figuring it out myself, because she asked me where I had heard it. Quoting the Dolly Parton song, "9 to 5", I replied, "like 'cup of ambition'" ("pour myself a cup of ambition"). She looked perplexed and didn't define the word for me. I don't think she listened to country music.

You already have an entry about the word "misled" being misunderstood as a verb - to misle. I am so glad I am not the only one - for years I saw, read and pronounced the word misled as though it rhymed with 'rise'. It made perfect sense to me as a word that was something like 'weaseled'. Noone ever corrected me, but somehow I finally figured it out on my own - several years after graduating from college with both Bachelor's and Master's degrees (and one of those with a minor in English)!

I believed that when my dad said that he was going to "give me something to cry about" that he truly was gonna GIVE me something to make me cry like a frog or snake or something likewise slimy and scary.

When I was about two, I was reaching on top of a table for a balloon. It was just out of my reach, so my mother told me to "stand on your toes." This of course made me very confused, but rather than risk not getting the balloon, I proceeded to literally put one foot on top of the other, which I assumed was how people "stood on their toes."

when my grandmother would want my mother to telephone her, she'd always say "Give me a ring". I thought she was literally telling my mother to buy her a ring. Since my mother would always agree, I imagined my grandmother to have some HUGE stash of rings omewhere...

As a young elementary-school student I thought you pronounced POLAND (the nation) as Pah-land (short O sound). To this day my father still ribs me about this.

I used to babysit for a little girl, Katherine, and when she was about 2 1/2 she would say that "this is mys" - it made perfect sense to her: if something that belonged to you is "yours" then if it belonged to her, it must be "mys".

I was shockingly old - in my twenties, even - when I finally understood the joke "What's black and white and read all over?" "A newspaper"

Of course, written down, it's not so tough to work out...