swearing

I Used To Believe Profanity Was A Language And The Words Were Okay To Say/Speak In That Way Until I Learned That Is Not True And I Could Get In Very Huge/Big Amounts Of Trouble For Swearing At The Wrong Person Or Calling Them Slurs!

KellGirl

I used to believe that rats and mice were the same species, rats being males and mice females, and that similar to the b-word meaning a female dog, the word "rat" was a swear word. Euphemistically, I referred to rats as big mice.

Such a rat

I thought that "ass" was just a rude word for one's body, rather than specifically meaning the posterior. I thought this because of how people say "Get your ass out of here" when they want someone to get out.

Golic

In my family little girls were not allowed to say the word "fart" so for the longest time I thought it was the f-word. When I was about ten years old it finally dawned on me that fart wasn't a cuss word after I saw the actual f-word spray painted on the side of my elementary school.

Lori

I used to think in spelling class that we would learn how to spell every word that existed. So, therefore, I couldn't wait until we got to the lessons that contained the swear words. I was a bit disappointed when I learned that wasn't going to be the case...:)

JP

when I was young, I knew what a jerk was, and I kinda knew what the phrase f**k off meant, so when I got angry at someone I would call them a jerk off, not knowing it was another term for masturbation

1 wierd and confused kid then

My Dad told me that a cuss word was a word that you should never ever use, or something terrible would happen to you. I don't remember how I came to know which words were the "bad" one's. But I remember sitting on the toilet repeating every cuss word I knew and telling myself to never ever say them aloud.

s***,f***,a**,b**** (Madi)

My dad doesn't swear in front of us - will still take me to task for saying "damn". When I was little and he got mad at other drivers, he'd pound the steering wheel and say "idiot, idiot, idiot!". so of course I thought it was a terrible swear word.

Anon

I had a friend growing up, and her parents used to talk about "Sumbees". These, apparently, were very bad people.

I was always puzzled by this, until they told the story that when she was about 18 months old, she was looking through her coloring book, and every time she couldn't get the page to turn smoothly, she'd exclaim, "Sumbee!"

It took them several times of seeing this to figure out she was saying, "Sonofabitch!". (If you're not British, and you've never heard a Texan pronounce this word, it comes out as "Sum-bitch!".

helen

When I went to a day-care center they showed the Disney Movie "Hercules" and there's a part where the bad guy calls him "Jerkules" instead and my friend told me that it was a bad word so I would always giggle whenever they said it in the movie.

Kelly

i used to think that i couldn't say the store name hechts because i thought it was a bad word because my mom always said use the word heck instead if hell when saying what the heck(or hell) so i also thought heck was a bad word

Anon

I believed that "shut up" was cussing so i said it 1 million times

Kyla

When I was thirteen, I thought that FTW stood for Fuck The World.

Anon

I thought "sake" was a curse word

shh

One day when I was four my mom was teaching my little brother to say frog... well he said couldn't make the r sound. I yelled "He didn't say frog he said fog".... My mom thought I had said the f word and for years after that I thought fog was a bad word.

Julianne1894

When I was little, one of friends told me that the S word was "sex." I would get really mad at my parents whenever they said the word "sexy." I wouldn't believe them when they told me that it just meant "pretty." I still have a lot of difficulty saying the word, and that's really bad cuz now I'm in high school and I have to use that word.

*crystal*

I use to think that slow-poke was a bad word because my mom always used and she seemed to be mad when she said it.

Brooke

My parents were fairly tollerant about me watching TV programmes for a slightly older audience. My brother got me addicted to South Park at around age 8. My brother always told me, "NEVER repeat the words you hear on South Park or mum and dad will abandon you." I haven't sworn since, and frequently tell people not to do so, even though I am fully aware that my parents aren't so heartless.

Kat

I used to believe that when you said swear words on the phone, the phone would eat me.

florian french student in eighth grade

i was babysitting this naughty boy who was about six i think. his dad was busy doing something near by but needed to have someone watch his son. so after running around for a while with him i got tired and wanted to have a little fun. so i told him that "hippo" was a bad word and to never say it. of course, being six, he was delighted to have been told a word not to say. so the next thing he did was run over to his dad and repetedly say "hippo! hippo! hippo!" his dad looked at him very confused and i just stood there laughing histerically. oh, hippo.

katie