speaking

When I was younger, I knew nothing about accents and thought that when someone talked with one, they had gotten into a car accident. One day when my mom's friend who had an accent came over, I said to her "I'm sorry about your accident, but I like your voice!"

Allison

I used to think that the expression "The former or the latter?" was actually "The farmer or the ladder?"

Fitzwilliam

When I first heard the phrase "survival of the fittest," (probably around age 7 or 8) I had no idea what the word "fittest" meant and believed that people really meant "fattest"! ^_^

Vivienne

I never had health class or "the talk" from my parents; so I always thought that vagina was pronounced like Regina. (va-jeen-a)

Anon

When I was about 8 years old, I overheard my family talking about the increase in numbers of Lebanese immigrating to South Africa. Somewhere along the line I also hear the word Lesbian.

Not knowing the meaning of either word, I told classmates at school that one of my older brother's friends (a man) was a Lesbian. Got into real trouble at home when the school queried my conversation.

Cynthia

I used to think terrorist and tourist were the same thing, I live in Florida, and everybody always complains about them....

Boo

Before I had started kindergarden, when it was saturday my parents were happy because it was "the weekend, baby" it was also what a dj would say on the radio, so i thought that the weekend was called "the weekend, baby"
Well, when i started school, we were learning the days of the week and when my teacher asked what the days saturday and sunday were called i answered with a smile and said expressively, like a song "Its the weekend BABY" i wondered why everyone laughed, and for the longest time "the weekend" seemed to plain of a word :P

Ayesha B.

When I was 8 or 9 there was a very unpleasant girl in my class. She was on my bus and lived at a place called "____ Manor," so I thought that's where they sent the really bad kids to learn their "manners." Every time my parents yelled at me for misbehaving, I thought that they didn't realize how fortunate they were to have me: at least I wasn't so nasty that I had to be sent to a manor!

Anon

When I was little I couldn't pronounce tr's and they came out like an f. So when we were moving, I saw the moving truck and was like "look at the big fuck!" My grandmother thought it was hilarious and so every time we saw a truck she would ask me what it was and meaning to say truck, I would say fuck.

Anon

I used to believe that people who spoke different languages just had different ears than us. If someone was speaking spanish, i thought they heard english.

Rachel

When my uncle got "ten-year" (tenure!) at the university, I thought he had a job for 10 years, so I wondered why his position was secure for life (and why they didn't call it something more accurate!)

Lee

I used to think tardy meant that you're being a r e t a r d then one day the teacher said that I was tardy and the teacher explained it to me

Anon

For a while I believed that saliva was a naughty word to say, because it seemed like a private bodily fluid that you should not mention in public.

DeeDub

My freshman year at Georgia Tech there was a celebrity basketball
game between the Playboy Bunnies and the school's coaches.
After the game the bunnies were chatting with the huge crowd of
young men; some sitting on other's shoulders to see better. One
such fellow, being overwhelmed by thier sexyness, I presume,
bellowed out "I think I'm going to have an organism".

sideways

My Dad would always say 'well cut my sock'if I or any other family members told him anything interesting or remarkable. I was 25 when I realised his favourite expression was actually a spoonerism for 'suck my cock'. Oh the long lost innocence of youth.

Geoff

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

when i was little, my big sister convinced me that she had invented and patented the word "wow" and that i was not allowed to say it.

brooke

When I was 5, my mom was being sued, and whenever I heard her discussing the lawsuit with my dad, I thought she was saying "lost shoe." So I worried very much that she would never find her lost shoe. It wasn't until I was saying grace at dinner one night and asked God to help my mom find her lost shoe that my parents figured out why I was so intent on helping my mom with her legal problems.

Sam

When I first heard the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" from Alice in Wonderland on tv, I thought the walrus said it was time to talk about "shoes and ships and CEILING wax." I had no idea why anyone would want to wax their ceiling, but I figured it had to be either more Lewis Carroll nonsense or else some kind of obscure ceiling maintenance technique that grownups used.

Amanda M.

One day I was in the car with my mom, and I said, "You know, I'm almost sixteen, you don't need to spell around me anymore." She didn't know what I was talking about. "I heard you on the phone, you were spelling a word, and I just wanted to let you know I know what you're spelling."
"What word did I spell?"
"O-B-G-Y-N."
Knowing that I was about to say something stupid, she held in her laughs and said, "Okay, then what does that spell?"
"Obgyn," I said, pronouncing it ob-gin.

Obgyn!