speaking

i used to think alka seltxer was alka sexer

Anon

i thought everyone spoke english

still stupid

When I was about 9 or 10 I used to confuse the meanings of "sensitive" and "sensible", so once I was like to a friend "You're very sensible" when actually I meant sensitive, and her brother(6 yrs older than us) was like "No she's not!" and that's when I got to know the real meanings!

Sensibly Sensitive

I used to believe that the Pokémon psyduck was pronounced 'pussy-duck'

Anon

I thought that if intelligent means smart there must also be a word "telligent" which means stupid!

Bootlebat

When I was five or six, I was watching TV (I think it was "The Simpsons") and a character mentioned a piece of paper but I misheard and thought she (I'm pretty sure it was a woman) said, "piece of *vapour*".

Anon

I used to believe that the phrase "Indian Summer" referred to some sub-continental practice of gift giving. Like they give you a gift that you keep for a while and give back.

I only recently (like past 3 years) realized that the Indian referred to was the american Indian and the people taking the gift back were the Whites - ie Oklahoma!

Anon

I've often heard of "taking something too literally", but do we ever hear of taking anything too figuratively? Well, I have done precisely the latter. Growing up, I repeatedly heard the phrase, "Go wash your mouth out with soap and water!", spoken, for example, when someone had said a "dirty word". I always thought that was clearly a figure of speech, and that surely no one had ever been literally required to do that. It wasn't until my first part-time job during college that I heard a co-worker speak of how her mother used to make her wash her mouth out with soap and water. Something about the context in which she was telling it seemed to indicate that her mother made her LITERALLY do that. So I asked her, and she assurred me that indeed her mother used to make her LITERALLY wash her mouth out with soap and water. I was astonished to learn that that was ever more than an outlandish figure of speech.

Jim

when i was 4 i thought id run out of words after id told a joke to all my friends and family. i had nothin else to say... and thats all i have to say about that.

cat

i used to think that you let the cat out of the bag meant that the cat had mis-behaved and was being punished in a bag. if you let it out, you had to be put in a bag. Thank God my mom told me about it before i reached 3rd GRade, my fellow Yankee-Noodles would of taken the micheal. Get over it, IM BRITISH!!!!!!!!!!!!

British\Babe/]]]x

I used to believe that the word 'indie' was a way of saying that something was made in India. Like everytime I heard about indie movies & indie music, I wondered how the heck so many things could be made in India! But then it dawned on me that indie meant independent. XD

Anon

Until relatively recently (I think i was about 17 and I'm 25 now) I thought the saying "up and at em" was "up and Adam" since I heard it but never saw it written down.

Nate

When I was little I thought that the saying was "party gifts" instead of "parting gifts". I thought that the people who lost on games shows got prizes that were called party gifts because they were fun!

Loves any gifts

Quite a few years ago, we went away with some friends near Christmas time and we were talking abut what our New Year's resolutions were going to be, and one of my friends said she gesticulated a lot when she talked and that her family etc said it can be annoying, so she was going to try and not do it so much. I had no idea what it meant, but for some reason, I thought it was something to do with sex, so i looked round really awkwardly as if to say 'Is she allowed to say that????' even though no one else flinched when she said it. I now realise why!!

Lauren Nind

O.K. you smugs,........OOPS that was really O.K. you's mugs

oddsox

I used to associate words with mental images...I had many, but the only one I can remember to this day was the word "Friday" conjured up an image of the king of spades.

Kendra

My friend told me that "namreg" was "moron" spelled backwards, and i believed it until my mom said it wasn't

Dummy

I used to think the word "stag" meant naked. I was shocked to hear my Baptist preacher father announce from the pulpit that the men's prayer breakfast would be held in our home, and that the men needed to "come stag".

Sarah

My friend and I had some confusion about the word "rape." I insisted that the word was pronounced "rap," as my dad with his heavy Chinese accent said it was, and that it was when a man kidnapped a girl. My friend thought it was pronounced the correct way, because his older siblings had told him that, but didn't know what the word meant. In the end we accepted my pronounciation of the word since after all, I knew what the word meant.

Jen

at the age of 6 i believed that flush was a color

zod227