speaking

When i would explain an action by saying"well, I THOUGHT......:, dad would reply "you know what thought did, uh uh in her pants" . I thought he said "you know what "dot" did" which is my aunts name. I was left with the impression that my aunt had a bowel control problem for a long time.

deedle

When I was a kid, my Dad used to say "this room looks like a bombsitit" when our bedroom was untidy. I never knew what a bombsitit was & if Dad was angry - it wasn't a good time to ask! It wasn't until I was about twelve, that I realised he was saying "this room looks like a bomb has hit it"! (We live in South London, England - which explains Dad's accent)

James

When I was about 3 or 4, I used to get "I" and "you" the wrong way round. I would say "you" when I meant myself and "I" when I meant someone else. I was using the logic that other people referred to me as "you" and to themselves as "I", so therefore I should refer to myself as "you" and to them as "I". For example, at the dinner table I would say to my Mum "You want some of mine" when I meant "I want some of yours".

Alan, Sheffield, UK

i used to believe that when on the news the presenter said bulletin i thought they meant they had put a bullet in some one!

m potter

We were once Burgled and so have a couple of my friends and our parents used to always refer to it as "The house is Upside down, its so messy" I was always puzzled upon returning back from school to see it back in its place again, the right way up!

Nick Blakesley

I used to believe that the phrase "Lord, have mercy" was "Lord, how mercy". At the time, I was familiar with the word "mercy" but had no idea what it meant. From the context of what I thought was "Lord, how mercy", I assumed that "mercy" must be an adjective, indicating the presence of lots of "merce" or "merces", whatever merse or merces were. I So I grew to think that "merce" or "merces" denoted a condition of difficult or dreaded circumstances. After all that was the kind of conditions generally being experienced or anticipated by anyone who said (so I thought) "Lord, how mercy!".

Jessica

Somewhere down the line of growing up, I lost the 'L' in flashlight. Even now as an adult I still tend to say "fashlight" instead and have to actually think about the word before saying it.

Silverchild

when i was a little kid, i was playing catch for the first time. when i missed a catch, my mom said, "now, keep your eye on the ball!" i grabbed the ball and stuck it directly on my face, right up against my eye!! (that's a case of taking orders too seriously...)

Cammy

I used to believe that the word 'caterpillar" was the big trucks that were used for road works....not a brand!

J@M & $uG@r

I used to beleive that voting was vomiting and that when mum and dad said they were going to vote I would ask them if they were sick.

Georgia

I used to think that the letter W had a sound that you'd repeat U two times. I was three and would pronounce, for example, watermelon: "U-Umelon". (double u...?)

Katie

I used to say it was "Pit dark" or Pit black instead of pitch when I was explaining how dark it was outside. I always thought it refered to how dark it was at the bottom of a bottomless pit.

Scott McElvany

I used to think that use your head meant you had to head butt

R

When i was in playschool we used to get sweets on a Friday, our teacher would always say "you'll all get sweets tomorrow" on a Thursday. I firmly believed "tomorrow" was another word for "friday".

Amy

I used believe the word "monstrosities" was pronounced "monstro-rites"

Anon

When I was little, I was once told 'Behave!' (as all kids are from time to time) My response was: 'I'm having!' (have-ing)

Tad

I used to get common phrases confused because I would only hear them not see them in written form. Examples: Vericose Veins, I thought they were Verycold Veins. I thought War and Peace was the name of the author (Warren Peace). I thought Off the beaten path was Off the beat and path.

Anon

When I was little I thought that everyone said spaghetti wrong. I said pasghetti instead; my family humored me and said pasghetti as well. This went on until I was about 7 or 8. I was a weird kid...

Sarah

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 

My husband and I were talking and somehow we used the word "Guaranteed".

My daughter asked
"Whats guaranteed?"

I said it was something you can count on.

"Oh" she said "You mean 1-2-3!"

-Mom