swearing

There were many crap definitions of rude words flying around my school. Twat was a pregnant goldfish, bastard was a male dog (go figure) and we thought that the worst word in the world sounded like "Rehhnaharn" because an angry Italian bloke once said it to Bugs Bunny in a cartoon.

Anon

I used to believe the words "fart" and "butt" were heavy profanity. I still have trouble saying these words to this day.

Jeff

I remember I thought the phrase "Amen" was a curse word...because my uncle was a mean, redneck guy who cussed all the time, and he used to always say "Hey Man" which sounds like "Amen"
So I thought that phrase was also a curse word along with the F-word and everything else he said all the time...SO the first time my grandmother asked me to say a prayer...I said it...but left out the "Amen" then she told me to say it. I freaked out and told her not to curse or God would be mad at her. She was VERY confused...I explained everything...she DIED LAUGHING...then assured me it was okay to say it...so I said it REALLY quick under my breath because I still felt bad for saying it.

Richard

When I was a kid, it seemed kids knew all the swear words. I thought swear words were a secret code that only kids knew about. I was shocked the first time I heard adults use OUR words, and doubly shocked to find out that these words had correct spellings and even appeared in printed books.  

Anon

I used to believe that "dang" was a really bad word and "damn" was the clean word to use. This got me in a lot of trouble with teachers and friends I tattled on for saying "dang".

Beaver Damnit

My dad is a builder and uses alot of colourful language, but had always admonished my brother and I never to copy any of it. However, I could never understand why he would describe someone who was restless and fidgety (especially if in and out of a seat)as "up and down like a horse's drawers." What he'd actually said was "whore's drawers". (drawers are panties if you're american).

mel

one time (about 6ish) i called my brother a bastard. my father overheard, smacked me and said do you know what that word means? no. It's someone who doesn't have a proper daddy. So i thought that a bastard was half-human, half monster.

Geoff

When we were young, the adults said that the rudest possible word was 'District Nurse'. And we believed them

Steve Haughton

I used to think it was illegal for swear words to appear in print. Then one day, a classmate brought Frederick Forsyth's novel "The Odessa File" to school and showed us a page that had the F word on it. I was shocked but pleasantly surprised to see it, and as we read that sentence to each other, we felt like rebels!

Kdees

My immigrant family tended not to interact very much with neighbors, so I seldom played with kids outside the family. So I thought that the people in my family were the only people in the whold world who knew any "bad words." I couldn't imagine that anyone else knew them, much less would say them.

You can't imagine my shock when I got to college and was living in a dorm with others my age. They knew the very same bad words! And what's more, they actually said them out loud. I couldn't figure out how they had learned them on their own.

naive Washingtonian

When i was young about three or four i use to like kentucky fried chicken but i had torouble getting my tongue around kentucky so i use to ask my grandma if we could go to fucky fried chicken. I think she came close to a heart attack every time i said it

shannon

When i was about three for some reason i called Kentucky Fried Chicken, 'F*cky Fried Chicken Kentucky'... i never knew why my grandpa kept asking me to say what my favorite resterant was.

Britney

When I was about 5, I thought "beer" was a profanity, and (wait for it) smacked a family friend on the lips for saying the word-- I was actually offended! Boy, did he look confused.

Io

I used to think that the word b**ch was a smell. I remember thinking "Aw man that dish rag smells like b**ch. I still know what the smell was too and sometimes when I get a whiff of it that word still pops into my head.

Murf

When I was 4 years old, a rumor was going around the kindergarten class about BAD WORDS (we were such naughty little children). A little boy was sitting next to me during story time one day and whispered in my ear "The F word is FORK!" I still don't know if it was fork he said, or the real word, but that's what I heard and for years I didn't use the word because I was afraid I'd get in trouble...

hannah

my dad used to cuss all the time around me, even though i was only 2. one day, i got a new baby doll. i went up to my mom and told her her name was b**ch.

Amy

My parents made me believe that anything with F and U in it (not necessarily in that order) was a swear word. So imagine what it was like not being allowed to say "fun", "full", "feud", or worse of all, "frustrated" and "unfurnished". I wasn't told the truth till I was 14!

Bobby the amazing guy who does stuff in places where stuff happens and stuff, but my stuffing is in the turkey. :)

I used to believe that the "beep" sound they make in place of a curse word on TV was actually what came out of people's mouths who had Terret's Syndrome.

NekoDani

When my mom was driving the car, she used to yell 'indictors!' really loudly to people who didn't use their indicators. I used to think it was a swearword so i cried every time she said it.

Confoozed

It's a tradition in my family to watch the movie "A Christmas Story" during the holidays. There is this one scene where Ralphie, the kid, is helping his dad change a flat tire and he drops the hubcap he was holding the screws from the tire in, and he goes, "Oh fuuuuuuudge." His parents got really upset and his mom put a bar of soap in his mouth. So for a short time in my young life, I believed that in a different context, the word "fudge" was a cuss word.

It was only later, when I was about fifteen, that I realized what Ralphie was SUPPOSED to say, and that it couldn't be said in a PG-rated family Christmas movie.

Funky Cold Candita