speaking

I thought that when people talked about skyscrapers they were referring to the jet airliners that I had always seen flying overhead leaving behind them white scrape marks on the sky. My brother corrected me one day when I pointed up and said, "Look, there goes a skyscraper." After he told me that it really meant a super tall building I thought that was absurd, because a tall building doesn't leave a scrape mark!

DeeDub

Everybody described the conscience as a "little voice in your head", so I thought that *all* thoughts were from the conscience-- essentially, I mixed the conscience up with the internal monologue.

I had (and still have) a lot of random thoughts, and when I was a kid, I was often told that I was very well-mannered for my age, so I thought that because I was so polite, my conscience was "bored" and just said random stuff.

Anon

When I was younger, I thought the word vinegar was the same as the word vagina, and in year 5, we had a TV crew come to our school, to do a documentary on school dinners, and I said into the microphone, which was turned up quite loud 'well I usually have ketchup or mayonnaise on my fries, but my older brother, in high school, prefers vagina with his'. Needless to say, that part was obviously deleted.

Anon

I thought "prison" and "prism" are the same words as each other.

Anon

There's a website called TV Tropes that has a trope called "Heroic BSoD", which means a hero has an emotional breakdown.

Because of this, I thought BSoD was a disorder, like OCD or PTSD, that meant you were prone to emotional breakdowns.

Later, I learnt that it's actually an abbreviation for Blue Screen of Death.

Anon

When I was little I used to believe that URDU is the most spoken language in the world

Anon

When I was little, I didn't really understand echoes. My back yard faced a mountain, so I could shout and a second or two later, I would hear the echo. I used to believe that there was another little boy out there shouting back at me. I would get mad because I used to think he was repeating everything I said just to get on my nerves. I would spend several minutes marching back and forth across my back yard arguing with myself...

LT

When I was young i mixed the two norwegian words for curious ("nysgjerrig") and shy ("Sjenert"). Come to think of it, I really was both... I guess people said I was both, and both words a "ch"-sound in it..

Aikeel (Norway)

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

i used to believe that the word chimney was made up and it was actually chimley. i believed it until i was about 11 and even thought someone had made a joke dictionary to trick me. i believed it up until i heard that song that goes chim chimney chim chimney chim chim charoo. lmfao.

maria

When people call Mexicans 'wetbacks,' I thought that 'wetbacks' were meant when a person takes a shower or plays with water, they're back was wet.

Anon

When I was a little kid, I thought that all words had their own limit. Which meant that when you said one word was at it maximum, you never could say it again. So I never said words like 'and', 'or' etc. because I was frightened that I never could say those words when I was older. -Actually I never knew what the limits per word were...

Sam

i used to think that when british people spoke english with accents they knew that they talked with accents. when i found out that from their point of view Americans have accents it blew my frickin mind'... and i was in 6th grade when that happened.

Anon

When I first heard the words "connive" and "conniving", I thought some people were trying to say "knife" and "knifing", not knowing that the "k" is silent.

Natalie

I used to pronounce choir as chore. It was until my 5th grade teacher corrected me when the whole class was reading the passage together. And the worst thing was, I was sitting right in front of my teacher the whole time. Imagine how embarrassing it was when she had to peer out from under her book and correct me in front of everyone.

JG

I was visiting my neice and she asked her mom why their dog was acting weird. Her mom told her that the dog was in heat. The next day I went over again and my niece opened the door and while waving her hand in front of her face like a fan siad, "I'm in heat, I'm sooo in heat." She thought "in heat" meant you were really hot.

StarDust

My parents told me that my great-grandmother was in the 'historical society'. I thought that they meant 'hysterical society' - and that they sat around all day laughing like maniacs.

Amy

I used to believ that "Shooting the Bull" literally meant what it states.

DJ

when i was little i used to think bumble bee was actually pronounced bumbow bee

cathy

When I was little, I used to believe that when you "eavesdropped" on somebody it meant to drop Adam and Eve on them.

Nashona