speaking

When I was little I thought there was a bodily fluid that gave people the ability to talk. No one told me this; I came up with it on my own. I thought that every time a person talked, some of the fluid would be used up, and once it ran out, they would never be able to talk again.

Daniel

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

I was learning geometry in school and I always liked to tell my parents all about what I'd learned. They were highly amused the day I came home and told them I'd learned how to find the circumcision of a circle.

Maya

After hearing a comedy/parody show where the superheroes referred to their nemeses as "evil fie-ends" I honestly believed for YEARS that the word "fiend" was pronounced "Fie-end". It was highly embarassing when at age 12 my friend pointed out that I'd been mispronouncing it.

Xyla

I used to believe that the "long run" was an actual race. When I was 7 I spent the whole summer running back and forth in the yard because I thought the long run was part of the gym curriculum in the coming school year.

Anon

Until I was about eleven, I thought that "the devil incarnate" was "the devil in garnet". So, until I learned the truth, I always pictured the devil wearing a red dress.

Anon

I use to believe that silver was gold and vice versa. When my mother told me she was getting a silver car and it would be there when I came home from school, I spent all day in a state of nervous anticipation. I thought I would be coming home to a fantastical car made out of pure gold, glinting and gleaming in the summer sun. When my ride home pulled up and I saw a dull grey car sitting on the driveway my heart sank to my feet. After that I always took the things my mother promised with a pinch of salt (or was it pepper?).

Vicky

When I would hear the phrase "gag order" on tv, I pictured people gagging when they tried to speak about the thing they were ordered not to speak about.

Sheena

For years I convinced myself that I had invented the word "stereotypical" and was really pleased at how much it had caught on. A little part of me still believes this. I haven't had proof it was around before 1975...

Toria

i used to think that the word "candid" meant "candied", so when i heard of candid photos, i thought that it meant photographs that were somehow coated with candy. I still imagine a screen full of little candies when i think of the tv show "candid camera"

molly

When I was rather young, my friend and I thought we could speak with British accents as if it was a whole different language, and we wrote it differently. All as were to be substituted for os, so bath became both (pronounce bawth). The opposite was also true; all os became as. So "Let's go" would become "Let's ga (gay)."

We used to speak in this manner around our parents, thinking they couldn't understand a word that we said. And of course, we had cracked a code; everyone wrote their words with these alternate spellings in England.

Nat sa British Noncy

I used to believe that a "Rear Admiral" was someone who watched scantily dressed people (like on a beach, for example) and admired their butts.

Kristin Renee

my sister and i used to think sideburns were called "hash browns."

ginny

I used to believe that "shame" is a kind of table because when children were send to stand in the corner (near that particular table) everybody had to say "shame".

Sabon

I used to believe that, in a deep and profound kind of way, the words "door knob" rhymed with "said so".

Katie

When I was about 8 years old I was briefly interested in astrology. I was born in September so I'm a virgo. Virgo is the Latin word for virgin. I assumed they were interchangeable words, I liked 'virgin' better, so I used to tell people "I'm a virgin!" Nobody ever corrected my mistake, I just stopped saying it when I decided I didnt believe in astrology anymore.

Soap

My cousins lived out in the country when I was younger, and one time they got all freaked out because someone said there were "poachers" prowling the woods. Being the little chunker that I was, I was ecstatic at the prospect of nice strangers coming by to cook us some poached eggs.

Paul

My mother used to believe that greenhouse gases came from real greenhouses and so was scared of walking near them because she knew that greenhouse gases were bad!

Anon

My mother is from London and she always used to say 'maswell,' as in 'yeah, we maswell do that.' I never really thought about it until it came to my GCSE English Lit exam and I could not figure out how to spell it. She said it again a few days later and I questioned her over it. Turns out 'maswell' is actually her version of may as well. I have no idea why I didn't work it out earlier.

Lynda UK

When I was a kid my father had a file holder on his desk that was like a hybrid between a letter rack and a lazy susan. His secretaries would put things in there he needed to deal with immediately.

The first time I ever heard someone say "I'll put that in my circular file" I formed an immediate association with the filing tool on my father's desk and the phrase. Obviously very important things went in the circular file!

Well into my adult life I'd use that phrase in conversation, not realizing I was implying that I would immediately throw the item I had just been given into the trash.

Boss: Ok, this project is critically important.
Me: I'll put it in my circular file right away!
Boss: .... Uhh ....

Anon