swearing

When I was 8 or 9 I was walking through the ravine with my friend who was a year older than me. Some boys were giving us a hard time, so she yelled to them, "Stop it you sonofabitch!" and clapped her hand over her mouth. I asked her what that meant, and she said, "It means son of the devil...I think." So when I got home, my Dad was entertaining an old friend of his from the Navy and I walked in and said, "Dad, what's a sonofabitch?" and he nearly flew across the table to strangle me, but his friend pulled him back, laughing, and told him to relax. He didn't tell me, but I knew it had nothing to do with a devil!

Shelley

I used to think that crap was like sour"kraut".

Weird as a 4 year old

My brother used to think toilet was a swear.

Oopsh

When I was in preschool, we were taught that "stupid" and "shut up" were the absolute worst things anyone could possibly say. Worse than any swear words. I, being an antisocial little brat, often found a need to use "stupid" in particular. It got me in trouble until I switched to saying, "You are so stu...bborn." I figured I'd just made up the word "stubborn" (which I technically did, because I'd never heard anyone else say it), and thought no one else knew what it meant.

I completely freaked out when I saw a book with the exact title "You are so stubborn" in a store.

Still a Stubborn Brat

When i was about 7 years old, i was bored of saying that sonmeone was "thick" as an insult. So i thought id come up with another that rhymed.. and i came up with "prick" so i used to call all the other children in my street "prick". I was ok because they didnt know what it meant until i was watchin a programme with my mum and a woman called a man a prick. I jumped up in anger that she had stolen my word! My mum told me that she hoped that i hadnt made it up and demanded my definition. I just said it was when someone got a needle and pricked someone. I thought i was quite quick in getting out of trouble :P

Jna (UK, 16)

i used to think the word "suck" was a swear word

Anon

i use to think sucker was a bad word because i called my bro that once and he told on me and i got in trouble

Suckor

I used to believe that bastard was just like darn because everybody would yell " You Bastard!" and they would be irritated with them. I was mortified when I found out what it really meant.

Anonymous

i used to think that bollucks (is dat how ya spell it?) was wot called your parents because i saw a boy sayin bollucks to 2 old peeps so i thought that it was fine. so i went home and said im home bollucks! oh i was in deep doodoo!

idiot feautures

I used to say "Shut up the hull" instead of "Shut up the h***," according to my mom.

Joey Schwartzman

My mum told me a pratt was a camel's bottom, and that one buttock cheek was called a nate. This caused much hilarity with the late 70s advert "Coffee tastes nicer with Coffee Mate", which of course we converted to 'nate'.

Rossi46Fan

When I was 3 my 17 year old cousin told me if I yelled the word "f-u-c-k" out the window I would have a lots of luck. The next day I did it and it did give me lots of luck only "bad" and ended up in the police station with my cousin.

Nun

I used to think 'crap' was a cuss word. And a girl at my gymnastics class would always say 'crap' whenever she fell. I always wondered why she didn't get in trouble.

Lizzie

This wasn't mine, but a friend's:

When my mother asked if I had done something and I answered, "Yes, Mom, I swear," he said, "Oo-oo-ooh!" I asked why, and he said, "Swearing is cursing!"

C.C.

I used to believe that if I had mentioned rude words I would would lose my tongue and not be able to talk again and I would go strait to hell!

Quako

I always used to think that the end line in the chorus for "Alice" - was Alice? Alice? Who the fork is Alice? I got really confused when my mum told me to stop singing it..

Anna

When I was little, I saw my brother giving the finger to this kid across the street. He was standing in our courtyard in front of the house. I asked him what it meant, and he refused to tell me. So I gave the guy the finger,too. My brother was so mad at me and he refused to tell me what it was all about. Then I went inside and asked Mom what it meant and showed her the finger. She asked me where I had learned it. I told her from my brother. Her face became red (from her trying not to laugh), and she said, "that is a very bad word, and you should not say that again".

Anon

When I was 3 or 4 my mom lost an earing in our driveway. She told me and my sister (6 at the time) to go look for it.

I went around the driveway saying "i'm gonna find that bastard!" over and over again.

My sister told my mom and my mom told me was bastard ment.

Anon

up until I was 10 I never thought shit was much of a cuss word until I slammed my hand on the lunch table by accident and screamed "SHIT!". My friend told me it was a bad word and I laughed!

someone

I went over my friends house one day when I was young and we were talking about school. One of her class assignments was to write about what scared you or something like that and it was due in a few days. So she asked me if it would be bad to put "I don't like spiders. They freak me out" because she thought freak was a swear word.

Tia