speaking

My friend used to believe that the phrase "missed by a hairs bredth" was really "missed by a Hares breath". To explain this he said " A hare was crossing the road when a car just missed it." The Hare said,"Phew that was close" Thus the hares breath.

Neil Swift

I used to believe that American people were the only people in the world who didn't have accents. I always conplained that I was born in the one place where people didn't have accents. I got over it, though, when my brother informed me that I have an American accent.

Nicole

I always got the words kidnapped and adopted mixed up. When I was in the first grade I almost fell over in the lunch line when my friend said she was adopted, (thinking she was kidnapped) I told my mom as soon as I got off the bus that day and she had to explain the difference.

Ribbon

I had a little brother who played soccer and watched a lot of sports movies. In the movies they gave people "pep talks". My brother, since the people were yelling in the movie, thought they were calling people "peptoks" and called me that all the time because he was mean and still is.

Anon

Once, when my sister an I were about 6 and 8, my mother grew exasperated with our unruly behavior and said, "You could try the patience of Job." I thought she said, "You could fry the potatoes of Joe," I was puzzled by why she wanted me to fry potatoes, and repeated that back to her asking what she meant. She started laughing. After that, it became a family inside-joke.

Kdees

I am an older sister and took great pleasure teasing my younger sister. I told her you had to be 16 before you could be sarcastic (a bit like buying alcohol). She reached 16 and asked if she was old enough yet. I said she had to wait until she was 18 and she very nearly did - Sorry sis.

Sarah

At age 7 my daughter had great fun shooting "baby guns" at summer camp (well, they were little and that's what I thought the counselors were saying", she explained. Okay I can see that but this next one???

Her and her friends thought that being "raped" meant being attacked with a garden implement, in other words *raked". I chose not to correct them on that one....they figured it out themselves when they were old enough to know.

Ladybug2535

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.

Ex-Gibbs

Whilst going on holiday once, my mother starting talking about how emigrating really appealled to her. My sister who was only young at the time came out with the classic line.... Who's Emma Grating? thinking that mum was talking of a person.

Mark

6 year old : I want to watch this film!
Dad : No you don't. It's about romance.
6 year old : So?
Dad : You don't like romance.
6 year old : What's wrong with romance?
Dad : Do you even know what rhe word means?
6 year old : Sure I do! People who live in Rome!

Sibasu

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.

jamby

When I was little, I thought the phrase "taking something for granted" was actually "taking something for granite" - made sense to me (and kinda still does)

Jayne

I consistently misheard "Dracula" as "Jack Lear" and that's who I was every Halloween until the third grade. I also believed that "The United States of America" was both spoken and spelled as one long word, and I spelled it phonetically for all of the 1st grade.

r. lacher

When I asked my father the meaning of the word "peon," he said it was something that you would "pee on." Like an idiot, I not only believed this well into my teens, but was only corrected after I announced it to my whole physics class.

Anon

My grandmother was fond of proverbs and would often say "you know what they say..." or "they say that..." When I was little I came to the conclusion that "they" were a group of people in an offfice somewhere, whose job was to sit around all day coming up with sayings and proverbs.

Andrew

When I was about five or so I overheard my uncle talking about how something cost him "50 bucks." I asked him what bucks were, and he said "dollars," but I thought he said "dolls." For the longest time I couldn't figure out what my uncle was doing with a bunch of dolls and why anyone wanted to give him stuff for them.

Matt

A friend of mine got into an argument with this metalhead guy. The metalhead guy thought the expression "play it by ear" was actually "play it by air." Personally, I don't know where "ear" comes from, but "air" sounds even more stupid. He was 18 at the time.

Matt

Because my grandfather spoke very quietly and very gravelly, I came to believe that we were born with a limited supply of speech and if we used it all up we'd be mute at the ends of our lives. I began trying to conserve words, as though they were a limited resource.

shacker