The Volokh Conspiracy

I believe Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, once told a story about a child who asked his parents where babies came from. After some hemming and hawing, they eventually explained that Mommy and Daddy "had sex" and that it had something to do with Mommy and Daddy being close, but left out most other details. Some time after, at a dinner party that both the parents, the child, and Miss Manners herself were attending, the father happened to put his hand on Miss Manners's shoulder. "Mommy! Mommy!" shouted the observant child. "Daddy is having sex with Miss Manners!" Miss Manners later reflected that she had never gotten a room's attention so absolutely focused on her before or since.

The new edition of Harpers Magazine (Dec. 2005, p.19-20) has a list of funny sentences by high school and college students, some of which involve malaproprisms. They are pulled from a book by Richard Lederer, The Revenge of Anguished English, that was published this year.

Many of the sentences from Harpers are not what what you're looking for ("The cause of dew is the earth revolving on its own axis and perspiring freely.") but some might be useful ("Dinosaurs used to smell bad, but they don't anymore because they are extinct.").

I recall a published letter to the editor in, I believe it was Car and Driver magazine, wherein a reader excoriated the editorial staff for reporting that the storage capacity of the trunk of a reviewed Buick sedan was niggardly. The writer wrote something like: "Hey, black people like nice cars, too, so cut out the racist crap."

Again, not exactly what you're looking for, but my wife was convinced for years that 'misled' is the past tense of the verb 'misle'--pronounced MY-zel, and meaning to trick or deceive surreptitiously. She had never made the connection between the spoken and written forms of 'misled' and the instances where she had seen it written were sufficiently ambiguous to allow such an interpretation.

I used to be in charge of collecting the $1 per person admission to our high school football games. School was at the top of the hill, and I had eight senior class girls helping me, two at each of the four approaches to the school. I stayed at the center to solve the problems that might arise with youngsters trying to get in without paying.
I was supervising two of the girls, seventeen or eighteen year olds. Within close ear-shot of me, one was telling the other of her recent visit to the dentist. "He (the dentist) put this soft thing in my mouth to get the imprint of my teeth, and then he told me to masturbate." Of course she meant masticate. I had to pretend I had not heard.

My mother is British so I used to use terms I learned from her without realizing that they were more British English than American English. This has lead me at least once to attempt to make a distinction in meaning between the British term and the American term where there really is none. I used to believe that the term napkin was intended to mean only those dinner table linens made of paper, while serviette was the proper term for those made of cloth.

This may not quite fit your requirements, but neither do the ones above! I grew up watching "Star Trek", and as a result came to think that the word "sentient" means "intelligent", because that's the way it seems to be used on the show. I've come across other Star Trek fans who misuse the word in the same way.

If this is funny at all, it's more for the reaction than my mistake.

During my freshman year of college I took a history of philosophy course in which we read Berkeley's Dialogues. Somewhere in there was the word "obviate" which I had never seen before. Rather than looking it up, I guessed from the context and the spelling that it meant "to make obvious."

I then used the word in that sense in the next paper I wrote for that class. The professor's comment in the margin: "This is NOT ENGLISH!!!"

Bourgeois is frequently misused by the democraticunderground types, unfortunately the best example I found was a horrible misspelling so I can't find it.

Perhaps along a similar line to the Pope being Catholic, for long-forgotten reasons I have always, from a very young age, connected the phrase "never look a gift horse in the mouth" with the story of the Trojan horse. Thus, I took it as a sarcastic statement that one should *always* look a gift horse in the mouth. Be wary of gifts from people who are likely to have antagonistic or ulterior motives. If I don't stop to think about it, I still do take it that way.

(Fortunately, I guess, few people in San Diego use that phrase.)

Craig,

I think you'd find a different explanation today, since "pimp" and "pimpin'" are compliments.

When I was about 8, I was watching a movie that depicted a dogfight (between fighter planes). One of the pilots said something like "that bastard at 11 o'clock is shooting at John, I'm going to go help him." I thought "bastard" was another word for "bad guy" or "opponent." A few days later a group of friends came over and we, along with my sister, played capture the flag. My sister ran toward my team's flag, and I yelled out "that bastard is about to get our flag." My Mom was really, really angry until I explained why I said it.

One of my Russian professors in college told us the story of a fellow Russian immigrant friend of hers who thought that the word "xing" was the name for deer, because she saw lots of signs with a picture of a deer with the word "xing" below it.

My dad tells the story of his medical training in London for one year in the '60's. He was a born and bred Brooklyn-er, and hadn't quite mastered the English idioms. During a particular medical procedure while he was in London, a nurse made a simple mistake and the English doctor asked my father how they'd handle such a situation in the United States. My dad, exuding Yankee confidence (and a pre-PC mentality), replied "well, we'd just slap her on the fanny and tell her not to let it happen again." There was a looooong silence in the room, and then the English doctor observed, "please do remember that over here, 'fanny' is dorsal, not ventral."

Neither of these are very amusing, but I think are examples of what you describe.
1. Like many other people I guess, I frequently used the word "disinterested" in my writing to mean the same as "uninterested," until about 10 years ago I was corrected by a friend who gave me the correct definition of "disinterested" as "neutral" or "impartial."
2. When I was a kid I always thought "virgin" was term to describe a religious or holy person (i.e., "Virgin Mary.") In 4th grade we had an assignment to generate sentences that incorporated the spellings of U.S. states in the sequence of letter in the sentence, such as "This is the MAIN Entry to my house." So I put, "Is she a VIRGIN, I Asked," prompting my teacher to ask me whether I knew what the word really meant, then providing me with the awkward explanation when it was clear I did not.

Perhaps not quite what you're looking for, but when I was a kid the sports pages used to change f**king (and other profanity) in quotes from ballplayers to "bleeping", as in "I can't believe that bleeping bleepity bleep hit the bleeping ball out of the bleeping park." I thought "bleeping" was a profane word that ballplayers used.

A friend of mine has often used the term "nonplussed" to mean somewhat the opposite of what it actually means, my guess being because it sort of looks like "non-flustered" or something like that.

Then there is the old Far Side cartoon: A dog sits in a car excitedly telling his doggie buddies, "After we go to the store my master is taking me to the vet to get tutored."

One of my Russian professors in college told us the story of a fellow Russian immigrant friend of hers who thought that the word "xing" was the name for deer, because she saw lots of signs with a picture of a deer with the word "xing" below it.

A friend who learned English while growing up in Sweden told me he had no language problems when he came to the US, except that when he saw a sign that said "ped xing" he had no idea what it meant, and just assumed he was in a Chinese part of town.

Byomtov,

"Xing" is coincidently the Romanization for a Chinese word meaning, among various other things, "to walk," making it especially apt in this case.

As for symbols being misunderstood, before hitting the 1st grade, I thought the thing that I would later learn was a map of the US was the symbol for "weather."

When I was about 13 or 14, my school friends were using expression "on the rag" a lot to mean hostile, irritated, angry, etc. I was unfamiliar with the origin of this expression, and my mother didn't appreciate it a lot when I used it in that context at home (especially since she was already angry about something else when I used it to refer to her attitude at that moment).

Re: Deer Xing.

As kids we used to picture deer making x's in the snow with their hooves and wondered why anyone would put up a sign to acknowledge it...

At one time in my youth, I thought I wanted to become a priest. I read a classic book called "The Cardinal," in which one of the characters said about another -- who was bound for the seminary -- that he should join one of the priestly orders (e.g., Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, etc.), because there was "not a trace of the secular about him." As a good Catholic boy, I understood that there were priestly orders, and there were diocesan priests. One who was not in an order was a diocesan priest.

So, when I told my mother that I wanted to become a "secular" priest (meaning diocesan as opposed to an order), she looked at me very strangely, and I did not know why until many years later.

Here's one from the first line of a personal profile currently on-line: "I am a warm, responsive woman, with simplistic tastes ....."

i used to assumed that "indifferent" necessarilly means not caring one way or the other, which used to make me curious because the episcopal liturgy (rite one, i.e., the old version) describes God as an "indifferent" . then i read c.s. lewis, who explained that the older (and more correct) definition of indifferent is impartial or unbiased. i just looked it up on m-w.com, however, it seems so many people have made this mistake that now "unbiased" is an acceptable, if secondary, definitition of "indifferent."

as I thought it is.

These malapropisms remind me of a widely cited story about President Bush's first year at Andover:

Bush also was struggling in class. For his first essay - on emotions - he wanted to impress his "eastern professors" by using "big, impressive words." Looking for a way to describe "tears" running down his face, he consulted the Roget's Thesaurus that his mother had given him. He replaced "tears" with the word "lacerates."

The teacher marked the paper with a zero so bold that "it left an impression all the way through the back of the blue book," Bush wrote.

(From Knight Ridder)

Growing up, I mistook the phrase "dubious distinction" to be a form of praise. Thankfully, I looked it up before I seriously embarrassed myself (again).

The oft misused Spanish term "mano a mano" does NOT mean "man to man", but "hand to hand".

Flammable/inflammable seems like a winner. It may not be humorous but it definitely fits the concept of a "cautionary tale".

Along the lines of IT Guy's story:

The first time she visited Germany, my wife -- like innumerable tourists before her -- was nonplussed to observe that seemingly every autobahn exit led to the town of Ausfahrt. She finally asked a friend who spoke fluent German, "if this Ausfahrt place is so big, why haven't I heard of it?" (Explanation here, for those who don't know the punch line.)

And long before I met her, my wife had a boyfriend who thought that "nonplussed" meant angry or upset.

Re "penultimate". Another word in the same category is "epicentre"; it does not mean "the very centre", it means "somewhere around the centre". (In the case of an earthquake, the actual centre is underground; the epicentre is the spot on the surface immediately above the centre.)

Oh, and Senor Chumbawumba, "celibacy" doesn't mean what you think it does either. "Chastity" means not having sex; "celibacy" means not being married. RC priests are expected to be both celibate and chaste. Nowadays, lots of people are celibate without being in the least chaste.

Big Dirigible pointed out the one I was going to point out (the meaning of the term "gunsel" in the Maltese Falcon), so I'll just point out that the Maltese Falcon was written by Dashiell Hammett -- Phillp Marlowe was the name of the protaganist in Raymond Chandler's stories.

And poking around on the net, it appears that Hammett liked to have fun with his editors. This webpage recounts a story of Hammett including a seemingly dirty phrase for the sole purpose of having his editor misinterpret the meaning of the phrase and edit it out.

I know many people who improperly use "Ground Zero" as a synonym for "Square One," as in, "I don't like the way this brief is reading; we're going to need to start all over again at Ground Zero." Apparently they don't realize that "Ground Zero" is the epicenter of a nuclear blast (i.e., the spot on the ground direcly below where the bomb goes off).

I hope I get proper credit for appropriate use of the word "epicenter."

[Peter's theme, an episode of "Who's the Boss," is picked for the parade]
Lois: It's great they picked your theme, but isn't it a little esoteric?
Peter: Esoteric?
[zoom in to the guys in Peter's brain]
Guy1: Could it mean sexy?
Guy2: I think it's a science term.
Guy3: Fellas, fellas! Esoteric means delicious!
[back to the real world]
Peter: Lois, Who's the Boss is not a food.


Brian: Swing and a miss.

I was ten or so and had just read Huckleberry Finn. My family is about as Caucasian as it's possible to be. (Trust me, it's relevant.)

One evening at the dinner table I got mad at my younger sister and (in a fit of puffed-up self-righteousness) called her a low-class nigger. My mother was shocked.

I had gotten the impression that "nigger" meant "bad person" and completely missed the racial context.

Along the lines of penultimate, I've always had trouble with the term "antebellum", which means "pre-war", because in order to have "antebellum", there must first be a "bellum". "Antebellum" doesn't even exist until after there was a "bellum", hence, in my screwed-up mind, "antebellum" wants to mean "post-war".

In the movie "Coal Miner's Daughter," Loretta Lynn's husband uses the word "horny," which she misinterprets to mean acting crazy/bizarre. She then uses the word during a radio interview, which caused an uproar.

Fascinating topic...

When I was a little kid and heard radio commercials for a pharmacy, I assumed it was a store where farmers went to purchase seeds and tools and other farm supplies.

In church and Sunday school I heard words for various kinds of angels -- Seraphim and Cherubim -- so when singing Christmas carols for a long time I sang "Oh come little Sedorphim" (thinking that Sedorphim were simply another category of angels, probably assistants to the Herald Angels) rather than "Oh come let us adore Him."

Growing up, I had always heard the term "bugger" to be either a slightly condescending term of endearment (i.e. “He's a silly little bugger, then” (John le Carré).) or to describe somebody who was being either shifty or disreputable. So, when I first heard the term "Bugger off" the meaning "go away" didn't seem like such a stretch. Unfortunately, I took the expression "I'll be buggered." to mean something along the lines of having been made to look like a fool or a liar. Imagine my surprise when I was alerted to the actual meaning after making that pronouncement in church.

While in the Army, a Sergeant was giving us a class. I remember he used the phrase "verbatim, almost word for word", which struck me as enormously funny as he was a person who usually used only the most basic of English. I don't know what he thought verbatim meant but that phrase is the only thing I remember about the class.

Moshe, I too was misled (recursive), which I found out while reading aloud in sunday school. In 6th grade I had to correct the teacher about 'inflammable.' I thought that confiscate was confisticate, and thought Learned Hand was native American. As a 1L, I thought loss of consortium had to do with affection and companionship, and used it in an inapropriate context.

I always used to think that saturnine meant "cheery" rahter than "brooding"... odd in my case, as I actually do know mythology reasonably well.

I still say 'misled' as the past tense of 'misle' though mostly as a joke with my wife. I love misling others.

In regards to Deer Xing,

I grew up in Idaho, learned to read as a young child, phonetically. I rarely, if ever, asked for a pronunciation of a word. And unless I used it aloud, no one knew what I thought the pronunciation was.

The most common way that Idaho posts those signs, is The deer picture, below that the phrase Deer Xing, and below that a distance like 5 miles.

In my mind as a child, I pronounced the word as "Zing" and always assumed it meant a zone or region. I was in my 30's before I found out that other people pronounced the word as "crossing". I still thing Zing whenever I see it.

An error of applying the wrong language's rules of pronunciation leads to the annoying mispronunciation of "coup de grâce". The phrase is seen far more often than it is heard correctly pronounced.

Rather than a blow of mercy or the putting another out of his/her misery (Ku de gras), it is frequently offered up as, being hit by fat (Ku de Graa).

The questions of how, when, and whether to correct someone's mispronunciation--particularly when that someone is a boss--arises too often.

When my father was a PhD candidate in organic chemistry at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, he worked in a lab with many other students, including several who were not native English speakers and thus not well-versed in British slang. At one point, one of the foreign students began to suspect that the native students thought he was stupid. In frustration, he exclaimed "you think I know bugger nothing, but I tell you, I know bugger all!"

We moved to Wisconsin when our daughter was four and a student in "junior kindergarten." She was told to wear green on St. Patrick's Day (a big holiday here in Milwaukee). Of course, most children's green clothing here is related to the Green Bay Packers. So, to this day, St. Patrick's Day is St. Packers Day.

I was a voracious reader of any book I could lay my hands on growing up in Europe, and as a result had a huge vocabulary of many words which are not ordinarily heard used in conversation. One of them was a word which I pronounced in my head as "MIZLED" (to rhyme with miser) which I defined as bamboozling somebody for your own personal gain.
It wasn't until I took a creative writing class in college that it was pointed out to me that I had been mispronouncing the word "MISLED" all those years. I still miss having that word, with it's extra connotations.

While we're on the (slightly off-topic) subject of mispronunciations, there are quite a few that have actually gone mainstream, usually due to being popularized by a particularly well-known example. The two best-known examples are probably "Celt" (the European ethnicity, correctly pronounced "Kelt" but often mispronounced "Selt" after the Boston Celtics basketball team) and "Halley" (as in Halley's Comet; correctly pronounced like "holly" but often mispronounced "Hayley" because of Bill Haley and the Comets of "Rock Around The Clock" fame).

I knew 'bastard' and 'bitch' as slurs before I knew their original meaning. (A upbringing to be proud of, I know.) My cousin asked me if I knew what a bastard was and I replied "Yeah, a male bitch." My extended family broke up and laughed for what seemed hours as I sat redfaced, wondering what was so funny. But my understanding is true in a sense.
Sasha's story about "of course not" reminds me of the Spanish phrase "como no", which means "of course", but suggests the opposite. Does anyone know the source of the phrase?

As a kid, I was introduced to the word "latrine" at summer camp. I was never told that although latrines are toilets, very few toilets qualify as latrines. Determined to show off my new vocabulary to the 4th grade teacher, I repeatedly asked for permission to use the latrine. Only later did I learn the word's true meaning and realized why the teacher gave me odd looks when I used it.

And "verbally" does not mean spoken.

Some of these are priceless! I laughed frequently as I read down the thread.

Okay - here's one that I found amusing. There is a neologism "Eurabia" that was coined by some on the right to describe the demographic shift going on in Europe. It refers of course to the high incidence of Muslim immigrants. The term is obviously meant to be used tongue-in-cheek and has a sort of joking connotation associated with it.

Not being politically correct, I have been known to drop the word occasionally, and not so long ago did so on a chat. This fellow became intensely interested in the term and kept referring to ancient "maps" and places like Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Turns out he was a retired British Rail worker, and was completely convinced a geographical entity named Eurabia existed. In fact he was so convinced this was the case, he had actually been researching a variety of maps on the internet.

When I explained that it is in fact a neologism, he became quite incensed and told me I was talking nonsense. I then directed him to a quotation from Oriana Fallaci and suddenly he disappeared off the chat.

Another term which is little understood is the Irish gaelic term "craic" which has now made its way into english usage also and is employed as a kind of a slang term when referring to "boisterous chat" of the type one enjoys in pubs and such places.

A friend here in Canada told me a hilarious story about a buddy who used the term one night in a bar. He said something along the lines of - "I'm going to head over to Mary's place for some craic". A fellow Miller Lite enthusiast suddenly became wildly keen to come along too, under the assumption that the reference involved wild and available women :)

Not an amusing story, but... When I was very young and first learning the alphabet, I somehow thought "elemeno" was a single letter with a long name like "doubleyou". I think this happened because of the cadence my mother used when singing them to me. This lasted until I realized a problem when counting the alphabet and not coming up with 26 of them. (I've always been a math nerd, so that wasn't terribly long.)

Re: AJ's comment about "ambivalent"

There is a great scene in "Girl, Interrupted" where the audience experiences a sudden and dramatic shift in viewpoint. The mental-patient protagonist misuses "ambivalent" and is corrected by her doctor. Based solely on the misuse and gentle correction, the audience recasts the protagonist from "assertively in control" to "young and forlorn" and of the doctor from "antagonist authority figure" to "caring professional."
---
Patient: I signed myself in, I can sign myself out.

Doctor: You signed yourself into our care. We decide when you leave. You're not ready for it, Susanna. Your progress has plateaued. Does that disappoint you?

Patient: I'm ambivalent. In fact, that's my new favorite word.

Doctor: Do you know what that means, ambivalence?

Patient: I don't care.

Doctor: If it's your favorite word, I would've...

Patient: It means "I don't care." That's what it means.

Doctor: On the contrary, Susanna. Ambivalence suggests strong feelings in opposition. The prefix, as in ambidextrous means "both." The rest of it, in Latin, means "vigor." The word suggests that you are torn between two opposing courses of action. Will I stay or will I go? Am I sane or am I crazy?

Patient: Those aren't courses of action.

Doctor: They can be, dear, for some.

Patient: Well, then, it's the wrong word.

Doctor: No. I think it's perfect.
---

-Stephen

I still am not sure of the correct meaning of this one, and no one uses it any more anyway, so it doesn't matter: Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont Hugh refers to something as, "gnarly," which I interpreted to mean, "disgusting." I often heard people in the mid-80s using it to mean, "cool."

Other, less-related: people in general do not understand the question, "Is that a threat or a promise?" Folks seem to interpret it to mean that a "threat" is just bravado, a bluff, but that a "promise" is more sincere, as in, "I really mean it." I always have interpreted it -- and I believe my way makes more sense -- as a half-joking, double-entendre-ish response, in effect saying, "Ooh, is that supposed to be threatening? Because it sounds like I should be looking forward to it."

Also, despite common usage, "momentarily" does not mean, "in a moment," it means "briefly." When someone tells me, "I'll be there momentarily," I always have to stop myself from asking why they can't stay longer....

Oh, and more incorrect usages:

My wife always refers to a "mute point."

I often see the phrase written, "peaked my interest."

Fortuitous is often confused with fortunate or lucky.

To Zargon's point about learning his letters, he should know that Elemenope is the Muse of the Alphabet.

Lots of these "oft-misunderstood" terms do in fact have multiple meanings in modern US English that include the "popular" meaning.

Houston Lawyer - in Mississippi, "y'all" is quite properly used in the singular, prized for it's inclusiveness (meaning "you, and if you're so inclined anyone else you might feel is appropriate"). The proper plural form is "all y'all".

Of course, Texans aren't known for inclusiveness, labeling anyone who hales from a state that doesn't border the Gulf a "Yankee". My wife recently had a long discussion with a youngster from your neighborhood to explain the origin of that term, and the role of her ancestral home Virginia in the War of Northern Agression, after the youngster directed that term at her as an epithet. Clearly your schools need more standardized testing.

Almost everybody, usage mavens included, misuses "bemused" to mean mildly or sophisticatedly amused. Hard to catch them at it, because either meaning usually works in context.

Re: "chaste" above. As to priests it means not having sex at all; as to everybody else, though, it means not having sex outside of a marriage sanctioned [a word that, like cleave, also means its opposite] by the Church.

For some time, I was nonplussed when people would say something about "have your cake and eat it too." How could you eat a cake you didn't have? I now understand the meaning, although I think it's an odd way of putting it.

I complimented the teenaged girl next door on how well she had painted her nails, pointing out that she had done both hands equally well. "That's because I'm bilingual."

A lot of us use "evidently" to mean "I'm not quite sure, but it seems to be the case that..." whereas it is synonomous with "obviously" or "clearly".

"Matriculate" is often used in lieu of "graduate".

Many people who use "notorious" and "notoriety" are unaware of the words' negative connotation.

"Arminian" (Jacob Arminius's theology) is often confused with "Armenian" (having to do with Armenia).

When my daughter was very young, she could not pronounce skeleton and started calling them skates instead. As she grew older, we never realized that she had internally defined 'skate' as a connected group of bones until she went to a halloween party in her teens. She was quite confused that no one had ever called a skeleton a skate.

KevinM: "chaste" is a term with both a layman's and a specialized religious meaning. In Catholic theology, for instance, all Catholics are required to be "chaste," with chaste interpreted exactly as you've defined it, as "not participating in improper sexual activities." But the more general secular definition is something like "refraining from sexual activity altogether." Per Dictionary.com:
Chastity, n.
1. The condition or quality of being pure or chaste.
2.
1. Virginity.
2. Virtuous character.
3. Celibacy.

At some point in my early teens, I heard someone refer to my grandfather as being senile. He was old and strong-willed. I assumed that the word meant "old but strong" --sort of Gandalf-like.

I had a creative writing assignment shortly after that, and I wrote a poem about a knight. One of the lines mentioned the "senile castle walls."

My English teacher raved about my novel use of the adjective, and how it showed some clever dual meaning or something. I nodded, but it sounded wrong. Later, I looked up the word in a dictionary and realized I had been using it wrong.

I never did tell that English teacher that my novel use of the word stemmed from a misunderstanding of its definition . . .

Here in the Los Angeles area I first heard "gnarly" applied by surfers to big and hard-to-surf waves.

Can't believe no one has mentioned the constant misuse of "literally" to mean "figuratively." As in, "when she was nine months pregnant, she was literally as big as a house."

Rich Rostrom-
That anecdote about Heathers is definitely apocryphal. "Gnarly" is used as teenspeak in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which predates Heathers by around 7 years.
Neil-
I had the exact same experience with "erstwhile." LOL

Not quite on topic, but, being raised as an atheist, I was pretty unfamiliar with basic Christian (or any other) theology. Thus, upon hearing the carol Silent Night around the age of ten, I naturally concluded that the line "round yon virgin mother and child" was actually referring to three distinct people, as it was obvious a mother could not be a virgin. To this day I still mentally place a comma after the word virgin when I hear that song.

"Gnarly" used in Fast Times:

Spicoli: "Oh, Gnarly!"

http://www.classicmovies.org/soundfasttimes.htm

Okay, as young kid, when watching the earliest episodes of Star Trek, the intro (which has not changed) stated: "To Boldy Go...yadda yadda". Well, I did not hear that correctly and thought the narrator said: "To-bo-le-go." I thought, what the hell is a Bolego? So, I just passed it off as some strange phrase for the show and let it go at that. It was (duh) twenty years before I actually "listened" to the intro and got it right! I don't feel too bad though. Upon my telling the above to my Mom, she stated I "got that honest". (Meaning, my ability to misunderstand a simple phrase I inherited from her.) As a kid, she was riding past a funeral home with her dad, read the sign and exclaimed: "What is a fun-er-roll"? Life has its moments. LOL

John Wismar wrote:

Other, less-related: people in general do not understand the question, "Is that a threat or a promise?" Folks seem to interpret it to mean that a "threat" is just bravado, a bluff, but that a "promise" is more sincere, as in, "I really mean it."

In the same vein is the old cliche "It ain't paranoia if they really are out to get you." Um, yes it is. Paranoia is defined simply as the notion that others mean to persecute you or otherwise do you harm. Whether or not that's actually true is irrelevant to the meaning of the word.

Thanks to Alanis Morrisette, the entire frickin' world now equates "ironic" with "a bummer."

See, this is part of Alanis's genius -- it's ironic that all the examples cited in the song are just unfortunate coincidences instead of instances of irony. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Another example: one of my sisters lived on a farm outside of Beaverton, Oregon. When she was raising her kids there, they were still pretty far out in the sticks. The only neighbors that they had were named the Bruners. Her son reached a fairly advanced age before he realized that "Bruner" wasn't the word for "neighbor" but a family name.

I just now understand what erstwhile means!

When I was young, I interpreted the line

"where seldom is heard a discouraging word"

from Home on the Range this way: seldom is a kind of antelope common out west (why I thought this I don't know), it also has some other meaning that I'm not quite clear on, therefore it is a "discouraging word" since its meaning is ambiguous.

I also misinterpreted the line "they've got nothing but their genes" from the Different Strokes TV theme song as "nothing but the cheese", meaning a big smile (a la Gary Coleman). Not until after I was married did I figure out the right words.

I learned the word circumcision in Grade 6 when tasked to find and defind a word by the teacher. I said "circumcision", but read out the definition of "circumference". It was this latter word and its attached idea that I thought I was dealing with.

The teacher took me aside, not able to determine whether I was being snarky or not (I had the reputaion somewhat, but this was above my head). I looked the word up afterward, and was probably still puzzled, but talked to no one.

Obviously, the two words were comingled because they were right by each other in whatever student dictionary I had.

I thought the cliche was, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.