speaking

When I was a kid, my mother was forever saying, "Why can't you be a gribble?!" This caused me no end of grief. I could never figure out what the heck a gribble was and why I should want to be one.

It was several years later I realized what a gribble was. I guess I was forever asking my mother questions - especially when she told me to do something. Her favorite thing to say was, "Why can't you be agreeable?!"

Dawn

I used to think that "lagoon" and "legume" were the same word. I thought a lagoon was so called because it is roughly shaped like a pea pod.

Valerie

When I was quite young I thought that 'this morning' was 'the smorning', and that it was some strange figure of speech, not a time of day.

"The smorning was cold."

Jamie

When I was a very young girl I talked a lot and people would make me feel bad by saying how much I talked and that I should talk less. My grandmother heard this and told me this... "Don't worry people who talk a lot never have bad breath because the germs can't live in a mouth that is always moving." I believed this and I always thought that the priest at my church had very bad breath so he must not talk alot. I then proceeded to tell him that he should talk more so his breath wouldn't stink so much. :( Needless to say I got in trouble.

Noel

I used to believe that when someone on a swing was "going crooked" they were "going cricket." I spent several years telling my friends they were "going cricket" on the swings before coming to the realization that I was using the wrong word.

Tiffany

I used to think that booby traps had something to do with actual boobs or bras or something. I think the idea was a combination of it being referred as a "booby" trap and the fact that the first time I heard it was in a movie where these boys were trying to sneak around and they got stuck in a line of bras that were tied together. One of them said, "Oh no! It's a booby trap!" Needless to say, I felt really stupid when I found out it just meant someone had set up a trick or trap for someone else.

Yasmine

I had only heard the word "boobs" used to refer to boobs, never the anatomically correct term (breasts).
So one time at a swim lesson my teacher told me she wanted me to practice "big breaths." Well, I thought she said breasts! Not too familiar with that word, I thought it meant breaching--as in, a whale jumping out of the water!

Aretia

whenever i went to a restaurant the waitress would come up to the table and ask "soup or salad?" but thats not how i heard it, i thought she was saying "super salad"! i always liked soup better than salad, but i thought for a very long time that a salad was the only choice, and that it must be pretty good to be called a "super salad" dont ask how i didn't figure out the mistake when other people ordered soup except me, it took me a long time to figure out what the waitress was really saying.

super salad?

i used to think Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, uk) was "Village Green Time" and when i asked why, i was told it was because back in the day there was only one sun dial in the town and people would all go by it.

Village Idiot

I've always misunderstood the phrase "you can never have too many friends."

I took it to mean that "having too many friends is bad, therefore it should never happen."

I was wondering why it would be a bad thing to have too many friends, and suddenly it hit me that I was misinterpreting it!

the cool anon

When I was laughing hysterically at something, my mom would ask me "What's so funny that's making you laugh so much like Hanina". I had no idea who "Hanina" really was, but I thought it was the name of some girl that my parents knew who liked laughing a lot. Later, I found out that she meant "laugh like a hyena", not "Hanina", and a hyena was an animal that laughs.

Anon

I used to believe the word seal had two different spellings. If you mean the animal, you'd spell it "seal" and if you mean the rubber band thing used to close lids, you spell it "seel".

Yeah

I used to think you could go to jail just by saying a word wrong during a speech.

Anon

I used to think Art Deco was Aunt Deco, and wondered who this famously artistic woman was meant to be.

Anon

I used to think gladiators were meant to be some sort of alligator.

Anon

I thought the phrase "In the midsts of" was "in the MISTS of", since it was like you were surrounded by mist and couldn't see anything outside.

In the mists of typing this

I believed that babies spoke their own language, that only mothers could understand (the product of watching mothers trying to guess at what their children wanted when they cried, I guess). Once, when a family friend was at our house with her baby, who was babbling away, I asked my mom to translate for me. I guess she was too busy to talk with me, so she just kept saying "I don't know what he's saying." It was a while before someone explained to me that babies don't actually talk yet.

Char

My Mom always used the phrase "For all intensive purposes" when I was growing up, and (of course) I picked it up too. When I was around 25 years old or so, I learned the correct phrase is "For all intents and purposes". I thought, wow, Mom's been saying it wrong all these years, but I never said anything to her about it. About 5 years later, she was watching Wheel of Fortune, and the puzzle solution was "For all intents and purposes". She said,"Heh! Well I'll be damned! I've been saying it wrong for all these years! " She was around 60 at the time.

Joe

When I was 4 I was very angry at my older brother and told my mom that i was "Happy as a Clown" until he hit me, she laughed and said it was "Happy as a Clam" i got angry and asked "Why would a Clam be happy?"

Kelli

For the longest time, I thought "granite" was the same word as "granted", so I thought that when somebody was "taking you for granted" it meant that you were going with them to collect rocks in the forest or something.

kitten