To ask the most basic thing you never knew/misunderstood until adulthood

[ChanandlerBongsLeftShoe]

I feel like a completely ridiculous excuse for an adult but the other day I found out the difference between cottage pie and shepherds pie.

I am in my 30s and gobsmacked (also feel a bit stupid now it's so obvious). I genuinely thought they were the same thing.

Is there anything you discovered as an adult that was just common knowledge to everyone else? Or perhaps there's a phrase you've found out you have been saying wrong all this time etc...!

Help me feel a bit better.

Wondering aloud where the canon ball lands when fired from Edinburgh Castle. I have never lived it down but I genuinely thought there must be a landing sight somewhere 🤦‍♀️

Took til my 20s before I realised that the olden days weren’t actually black and white. Ffs. Literal to the extreme.

^

As a dc - The guerilla soldiers abroad. I thought they were gorillas attacking humans

pushingdaisies - while I get what (I presume) you were trying to say, as others have said Wales IS a separate country to England

I try never to mock people for mispronunciations because the english language is so illogical there are always words that someone won't know, 'Cholmondley' 'Fowey' and 'Magdalen' (college), for example, however I do always have to think before saying 'Quay' or 'Gaol' exactly as read even though I KNOW that's wrong. Also raised a laugh at going to the 'linger-ray' department as a child!

Oops that was about not knowing Wales is a country

I thought "Tabernackle" was an arts & craft. 😳Like "crochet" or "cross-stitch".

I only found out last year, at the age of 31, that W.C stands for 'water closet'

I also only found out a couple of years ago that spiders don't crawl up the plug holes and that they get into sinks/baths because they fall in. I used to go round putting the plugs in before we went away because I was absolutely convinced they crawled up. DH thought it was hysterical when he realised what I was doing! I remember doing it as a teenager when I lived with my parents and they never said (maybe they didn't know either!).

By pure chance, when I put the plugs in, there were never any spiders in the sink/bath when we got back and so it reinforced the idea in my head!

@WeBuiltCisCityOnSexistRoles

Erm, sorry 'bout this, WeBuilt, but that ain't the time there on those screens behind which the commentators don't sit!

(It's the score!)

@tor8181

my parents have stayed at the same house for years with the same neighbors and when i was a child my dad used to say (or ask himself) can you ask alan (next door ) to lend us his tools and he would as he was a self employed builder
*
last month i found out that they were called allen or hex keys all along
i just never knew their real name as it was allans keys we used to use*

Love this

During my childhood both my mum and her mum (my grandma) had a nest of tables.

My mums maiden name is Nester.

I always thought they were 'Nester' tables belonging to my family.

I only twigged years later when I couldn't understand why other people had our family tables!

Last one- when I was a child I used to visit a lovely little village where my auntie ran a pub and loved walking around looking at all of the different shops ( grew up on outskirts of Liverpool so this village was very different to me ) and I was fixated on the " anti queues " shop. I was a very clever child apparantly but never saw the word "antique" and it took me years to figure it out.

This reminds me of the IT Crowd Episode with 'Damp Squid' and 'Pedal Stool'- both of which I believed to be expressions until my 20s!

I also thought that the word squeamish was spelt 'screamish' because you scream when you see something disgusted by something!

I only found out that 'wriggle' and 'wiggle' are different words this week. (I went to a Russell Group Uni and am usually good at spelling but have a bit of an 'w'/'r' speech impediment!)

My friend told me it wasn't! Learning something new (or re-learning as I already thought that) ha

At primary I thought Pontius Pilate was pontius pilot,and wondered how there was a pilot in Olden days

When I was younger I always looked at baby stair gates and thought, “how stupid, the poor baby will fall down the stairs and into the gate. That must hurt.” But of course... they’re to stop the baby getting up the stairs in the first place

"By pure chance, when I put the plugs in, there were never any spiders in the sink/bath when we got back"

they climb up the chain and escape.

Always thought that Yosemite (National Park) was pronounced Yo-se-mite and when I was having this conversation with my brother he reminded me that we'd grown up watching the Yosemite Sam cartoon.. I always thought it was called Yo Sammity-Sam 😂

Mercaptan is the stuff they put in natural gas so you can smell it.

It’s also believed to be partially responsible for why some people’s pee smells after eating asparagus.

DH didn't understand remortgaging. He was worried that, because I'm changing jobs around the time our two year fixed deal is up, that we wouldn't be able to get a new mortgage and would lose the house. I had to explain standard variable rates etc. He is a very intelligent man.

.

So I wouldn't say this is really basic (preparing for everyone to say they all knew this ), but it blew my mind when I found out.

The map of the globe that most people are familiar with is not a correct representation of size.. Greenland on a world map looks similar in size to the whole of Africa.. when Africa is actually 14 times the size of Greenland.

For quite some time I thought the phrase for something ultra modern was ‘state of the ark’. I remember being slightly troubled by the idea that the ark was pretty ancient but still carried on saying it.

@caughtinanet
but streetwalking is another term for prostitution, so the poster means they confused street-walking with jaywalking

"GiantKitten

Livpool
Are the Elgin marbles not spheres?!

They're marble statues etc "liberated" from Athens by Lord Elgin.

Greece wants them back (quite right too hmm)"

I hadn't really thought about the shape of the marbles but was definitely expecting something more polished when my sister-in-law suggested we look at them in the British Museum last week.
Most of them are a kind of frieze, not really even statues.... and totally underwhelming really.
If Greece wants them then they are welcome to them!
(I imagine this makes me a Philistine).

Lowering the tone somewhat, my parents always used the word "tooze" to refer to what is commonly called "a poo".
It was only when a university flatmate said "do a number two" that the penny dropped with a loud clang.

In 1979, my schoolfriend Megan had a gnarly-looking mutt named Fud.
"Why is your dog called Fud?" I asked.
"Heh heh heh, that's for you to think about," she sniggered.
Forty years on, I realise derrrr Fud is an acronym. F-U-D ...
Why am I so slow?