To have completely misunderstood the meaning of some sayings?

I agree about bucolic, it sounds like a nasty stomach virus.

See also pulchritude. Sounds like something putrid and repulsive but means "beauty".

I also think emasculate sounds wrong. It sounds like someone is made super-masculine rather than less so.

I have noticed a lot of people using "fulsome" to mean genuine high praise but it actually means praise which is insincere.

As I child I didn't properly understand "many hands make light work". I envisaged lots of people reaching up and putting their hands on a light bulb and it lighting up.

I was also confused by "life is but a dream" in Row row row your boat. I thought it was Butterdream and decided that it must be like a butterfly.

I thought the saying "when the going gets tough the tough get going" meant when things are hard the so-called tough scarper. Actually it means they spring into action.

And "a friend in need is a friend indeed" I thought was a kind of sarcastically saying when someone needs something from you they act like a really good friend. Really it means if someone's your friend in your hour of need they're a true friend.

Do you think that's where 'being a pussy' came from?

But spendthrift comes from the word thrifty which means careful with money so its meaning should be quite clear 🤷‍♀️

A member of my family frequently uses "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" wrongly - she thinks it means something like "that proves it!"

I've told her that "proof" in the saying means "test", like the way you leave bread dough to "prove" to check the yeast is working and see if it’s ready to put in the oven, or see "proofs" of something that’s being printed to check it's right before the final printing, but she doesn’t believe me.

Pusillanimous sounds like it should mean scrappy and ready to fight to me

No, a friend in need, is a friend indeed because they'll do anything for you because you're going to help them, so they are acting 'like a good friend' because they want something out of you.

Aha, my husband has a MN account after all! He says this every single time he hears the word used.

One of the much discussed phrases on this thread would be a lot clearer with an added comma. A friend, in need, is a friend indeed.

It's very rare indeed to see 'deceptively' used correctly by estate agents. 'Deceptively spacious' does not mean what they think it does.

I don't understand this either.

It means you don't / can't know if the thing has worked / is good until the very end, surely?!

So you don't know if the pudding is any good until you eat it - there's no way to tell before that.

As a kid I thought a stuck pig was squealing because he was trapped and wanted to be set free. It was a long time before I realised that is not what 'stuck' meant in this phrase.

Another one that irritated me is the misuse of 'epicentre'. "This is the epicentre of the drug trade" etc🙄. It used as a faux intellectual expression to make some more dramatic. It is not a synonym for 'centre'

Tall, Dark and Handsome. I always pictured that to mean a white man and that the "dark" was in reference to features such as black/brown hair or brown eyes. A friend told me that the dark was in reference to skin colour and that it basically meant a person of colour.

Before anyone comments that it shows my bias, I am a person of colour!

Yes. A petard is a little bomb that they used to blow up walls in sieges in medieval times, definitely not Biblical-era tech. But the concept is an old one I imagine.

I am fascinated by the different interpretations of "a friend in need...". I had only ever heard the nice one (when you're really struggling and a friend helps you, that's a very good friend) but I am enjoying the more cynical interpretation as that can be true too!

"Spendthrift" does make sense, or it used to. "Thrift" originally meant "wealth" so it just means someone who spends what they've got instead of saving it.

Love a bit of midweek etymology

Yes off your own bat which I believe is a cricketing reference

I also say moot point a lot and unfortunately I think people think Im saying mute.

Spendthrift is surely an oxymoron, Ive always known what it means but it doesnt make sense

Is it?! Am I just as bad 😂

I’ve just re read it and still think they sound close

No ..its if you have a friend and they need something from you, they are going to act as a really good friend to you.

Isn’t the epicentre effectively the source/centre point of an earthquake? The epicentre of the drug trade makes perfect sense if so because it’s a metaphor for the strongest point that then has ripple effects much further out?

Or have I also misunderstood epicentre?

English is an interesting language,
and especially more so when you start throwing some colloquialisms in there. You really do have to understand the etymology of the idiom before you can really understand what idea is being conveyed
An awful lot of people hear a saying and then just assume they know what it means but words are confusing without context.
More times than not the sayings are historically based. As a child I loved finding out the meanings behind strange sayings and I had many books about this very topic.

(Example "good night sleep tight...."
What does sleep tight mean?
I'm not asking the question, I know the answer...but if you don't know what it means, you could find out historically the story about the history of rope-based bed frames)

You could Google what some of the most commonly misunderstood phrases and sayings in the English language are and I'm sure that there'd be a huge list.
But you're right, some sayings could potentially be taken two ways if you're not sure where the saying comes from, or if you've missed heard it and you've never seen the words spelled, as there are many words that sound like other things, and that can also lead to misunderstanding.

Good luck!
🍀

"Hoist by your own petard" is from Hamlet