language: speaking

My last name is Adams, so when I first heard my parents use the expression "Up and at 'em," I thought they were saying "Up and Adams," which was a special expression just for our family. According to my logic, people who weren't named Adams couldn't use that expression, and therefore would just have to say "Get up," or whatever, because they weren't as cool as us. ;) My parents thought that was so funny, they actually started saying "Up and Adams" instead of the real expression, lol.

When I was little, I used to believe that Baskin Robbins was called Batman and Robin's. For the longest time I never knew why everyone would laugh at me when I said, "Hey mom, can we go to Batman and Robin's?"

When i was 3, my 10 year old cousin said she had piano lessons and couldn't play with me.

For some reason, i thought that piano was a type of a game you play on a table, like chess or checkers. My cousin was confused when i asked her where the "pinanno"(how i pronounced "piano") game was. Then when i told her she said she had "pinnano" lessons and couldn't come over, she laughed and told me what it really was. I felt stupid.

I never had a piano in my house, only a toy keyboard, so that's probably why i never knew what it was.

I mixed "confidence" up with "competence" so when I was watching an episode of a kids' show that involved the idea of "losing your confidence", I was like, "But she didn't lose her confidence! She's still good at it, just too nervous to actually do it."

I thought for a long time that the word "awry" was pronounced like "aw-ree" (rhymes with sorry) , instead of "uh-rye". The weird part? I had heard people say it lots of times, but it took ages before I realized it was the same word

At 31 I moved from Italy to London, UK. I used to believe that the phrase "out of spit" was a particularly graphic and rather dramatic way of expressing one's animosity and vengeful intententions. Only 8 years later, after moving back to Italy, I eventually realized that one is supposed to say "out of spite".

When grown-ups said "this morning", I thought they were saying "tiss morning"
When grown-ups said "newspaper", I thought it was two words: "new" and "spaper"
But really, my hearing is okay.

I opened the car window a crack and my mother told me to shut it because I'd "catch a draft," which I interpreted as "catch a giraffe." I didn't question the sense of it, and just assumed it meant "to get a chill." I think I must have been learning about idioms at the time ("have a cow", etc.), because it seemed perfectly natural to have an expression that made no sense literally.

For years I believed that "giblets" was a made-up word my parents used to describe me and my siblings. My maiden name was Gibbs, so "giblets" obviously meant "little Gibbses". It makes perfect sense. I was in my teens before I figured it out.

I once saw a sign that used to the word 'Prohibited" and I asked my dad what he meant. He said it meant it was forbidden.
So for the next few years I believed the word "prohibited" was pronounced "forbidden". It wasn't until I was reading a sign aloud that a friend of mine asked why I said "forbidden" instead of "prohibited" and I realised that they were actually separate words.

For the longest time I thought the phrase "Dog eat dog world" was actually "Doggy dog world" and this made me happy because I liked dogs.

when i was young i used to believe that the 'carry-over champion' on game shows was in fact a 'karaoke' champion. It wasnt until i was 17 and asked my boyfriend what on earth a 'karaoke' champion was, that i learnt the truth.

When I was about ten or eleven, I somehow mixed up the words "lesbian" and "leprosy." I used to be afraid of catching "lesbian" after that. One day I overheard my mom on the phone; she was talking about some woman she knew who was a lesbian, and I freaked out and started screaming at her to get away from me because I thought she'd picked up "lesbian" and I didn't want to catch the disease too!

Needless to say, I felt very silly when my mom explained my mistake.

When I was about 6 I knew a mute girl at primary school. I used to believe that people had a limited number of words that they could pronounce in a lifetime and once you'd used them all up, then you became mute. From then on, I paid special attention not to waste words.

I used to believe there was some secret reason about why "clothes" wasn't pronounced "cloth-es" and "shoppe" wasn't pronounced "shop-e." I thought that when I grew up, my parents would sit down and explain these secrets (and others) to me.

When I was young, I heard the word "castrated" somewhere, which means to cut off one's penis. At the time, for some reason or another, I thought it meant to abandon something, like "abandon ship!" So, my younger brother and I were sledding one snowy winter evening, and we were headed for a tree... would you like to guess what I shouted?