Things I'm embarrassed to have realised so late in life...

[OrangeFlowersAreLovely]

Those ID necklaces? I had absolutely never heard of the word "lanyard" until around 3 years ago. All my friend's children learnt this way before I did. If you had told me "Lanyard" was a European city - I'd have believed you.

That little press send arrow in the top right hand corner? It only occurred to me in my mid 30s that it is in fact a paper aeroplane. I just thought it was a dodgy triangle.

I was absolutely stunned to find out the woman who plays Amanda in Motherland is not Catherine Tate.

Any confessions to console me I'm not the only one failing at life?! 😃

I don’t understand the phrase if you use “thing”. What is the thing? And, as it’s another thing, what was the first thing? It makes no sense to me. (Sorry if already explained, I can’t bring myself to read back through so many posts!)

It’s not about another think coming, it’s about another event occurring, the ‘thing’

I live rurally and would take my dogs to the fields to run them. My neighbours informed me that shouting "C"mon doggers, let's go!" was perhaps open to being misconstrued

There was a whole thread once about the ‘another think’/‘another thing’ wars. I was genuinely staggered to find that some people were not only beyond adamant it was ‘thing’, but seemed prepared to defend it to the death.

Both are not acceptable. It’s ‘think’. How on earth could it be ‘thing’? It makes zero sense.

Yes. And the picture posted looks like some crazy photoshopped fantasy world! 😂😂

All is right with the world then. As long as a change in Monarch has not precipitated sudden understandings regarding pineapples in the general population.

Well, but how would you be expected to know the detailed geography of another country? It's not surprising for an Irish person to think Pontefract's in Wales, or for an English person not to know of Hillsborough Co Down.

OTOH I am S T A G G E R E D at some other admissions... Not knowing where your tonsils are?! Thinking hares are mythical? Surely those are not possible? Maybe it's just people joking....

@Pilcrow
See it makes perfect sense to me to say thing.
If you think.a certain thing is going to happen and it doesn't then you have a different thing coming instead !

I'm so grateful for knowledgeable people like you @lizziesiddal79 . Yes I know I could Google it but that would be boring compared to finding out things on a thread like this! 🙂

Yes, how pineapples grow I found out about as an adult (when I was a kid they came in chunks in a tin and it wasn't the sort of thing you'd see growing in Greater Manchester), and there was no Google then.

How cashews nuts grow I found out about only a couple of weeks ago. And it blew my mind, as the spammy web pages would say. Now I realise why they are quite expensive.

abcnews.go.com/US/internet-realized-cashews-grow-people-stunned/story?id=65565080#:~:text=%22Unlike%20many%20other%20nuts%20and,at%20University%20of%20California%2C%20Davis.

But then you are changing the word halfway through the phrase.

If you think that's what's going to happen you have another think coming. 2 halves of the same thing.

It only works with thing if you make it clunkier; if the think that's the thing that is going to happen then you have a different thing coming.

It is think. There may be some online dictionaries who have accepted that so many people have misheard it as thing that they may as well accept thing as an alternative but that's still accepting an inaccuracy. The correct, and more logical, use is still think

Aren’t we all terrified of doing something stupid while filling up the car and being spoken to over the loudspeaker?!

Well you are partly right; they did it in the 18th century according to stuff I've read before and I was also told by a very old acquaintance (ex-Barrister) the same thing! 🤔

Thank you for this - I knew that Carolean was not the term I was familiar with but (I was very slow this morning) could not think what was. Caroline, for sure. Although as you say, unlikely to persist.

“Well, but how would you be expected to know the detailed geography of another country? It's not surprising for an Irish person to think Pontefract's in Wales, or for an English person not to know of Hillsborough Co Down.”

@TheEponymousGrub Yes! I’m a bit worried that people expect me to carry a detailed map of the British Isles in my head. I know the rough geography of places I’ve lived in or visited and some others I’ve had cause to look up. But some parts of the country I’m really unfamiliar with. I did GCSE geography but at no point did that involve memorising maps. Is this something I should be doing in my spare time?!

This has been a very funny read! I completely understand mispronouncing words you've only seen written down (I used to think chasm was pronounced with a CH)

But thinking hares, reindeer (caribou) and narwhals are fictional - did you not watch David Attenborough as a kid?

Nope. It’s about having another think because your previous thought was incorrect. Think again, in other words. As I hope you will do now. 😂

I used to think that Prefects were called Perfects! That’s how I used to read it in all the boarding school stories that I loved as a child. It was only when my DCs started attending a school that actually had prefects that I realised I was wrong!

I still often read it that way in my head even though I know the h is silent. Same with quay, hyperbole etc. I know how they are pronounced but I think I sometimes read to fast for my brain to process.

I only recently found out that Stuart Little is in fact not a mouse, mind blown!

Oh yes, I did have those books too.

I’ve just googled and apparently lots of people think it’s a mythical place and it’s become shorthand in English for somewhere far away!

Carolus is the Latin form of Charles

It isn't, it is definitely "think".

I say "I want a lolly" to my mum and she says "you've got another think coming if you think you're getting a lolly as well as cake and lemonade".

Thing makes no sense in the context of the expression.

@ThickCutSteakChips I know!!

Ha ha I love that. We didn't have them in my school but the adjacent boys' school did and they did think they were perfect. (Personally I think a prefect system is legalised bullying, I was glad our school didn't have them).

I did GCSE geography but at no point did that involve memorising maps. Is this something I should be doing in my spare time

Definitely! I spend hours looking at maps, they are fascinating, and it's one reason I don't need satnav except sometimes for the last half mile or so of a journey.

That said, I know about Pontefract because I've passed signs for it on the motorway, so it's also about being reasonably well travelled.