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.

Wait WHAT. Why is it called the dark ages, then?

Fuck me I thought I was reasonably educated.

I’m 40 & it was only in the last couple of years that I discovered Centre Parks isn’t under a glass dome. I assumed it was so expensive because they could guarantee that it never rained & was always warm.

I have googled 4 times so far, checking facts that I simply could not believe to be true. Every day's a school day.
Hand gliding and The Elgin marbles have been a revelation

I’ve learnt so much on this thread I can’t believe renumerate isn’t a word! I actually googled to check.
Here’s my offering: my friend asked me what year dragons and unicorns had gone extinct

Simon and Garth Funkel! 🤣

I knew the shepherd pie/cottage pie one.. Think shepherd....sheep.... LAMB Then the cottage pie is the other. Also knew the ABBA one (that it's the initials of the 4 members,) as I have always been a massive fan. Also knew the pineapple one as I used to play farmville!

A few of mine tho! I thought Holland was a country! (Til I was 45!)

Also thought tigers came from Africa (til I was 47!)

Only found out 2 years ago, that the lead singer of HAWKWIND (silver machine!) was Lemmy from Motorhead!

There are more I am sure.

That duct tape is not called duck tape.

I had a friend at school called sigh o ban too and Sigh-Ann (Sian). Groin-y for grainne. Recently learnt how to say Taoiseach and Tanaiste thanks to brexit. Dún Laoghaire was an eye opener in my early 20s. Had to copy and paste that one as no hope of spelling it. I would love to learn Irish as all these words have inspired me and I have Irish heritage. Somewhere...

Green hill

I think I did too Sue

Presumably without as a oppose to within but unusual use of the word

Mammyloveswine that would make perfect sense! Oompah loompahs from Kuala Lumpur

I was in my twenties when I found out that Timbuktu was a real place... I thought it was pretend land that my family had invented...

I pronounced Irish names phonetically until well into my twenties (I’m foreign, in my defence). As a trainee lawyer doing conference calls it was genuinely a mystery why A-oy-fee and Say-or-sya never turned up for the call despite being invited, but these other two ladies did. Glad I never asked my supervisor.

I've only today understood what a prime number is. Maybe my Maths teacher was bad at explaining but it didn't click at all until today.

I used to get a lot of IRish names wrong myself. Even last year I saw one that stumped me. Caimhin. I had to sound it out phonetically in my head, falteringly, and then I had an epiphany, ah! Kevin!! Most Irish names I know at this point obviously but some aren't translated that often. In the civil service, a lot of the older people have two names on the go because they were just given a name in Irish when they started whether that was their gra or not. So you might have Diarmuid Breathnach on the ancient old paper file but Dermot Walsh on the computer records.. It's not ''stupid'' to not know this stuff!

@PinkSmitterton it's Shepherdess pie

What?? Holland isn't a country?? Then what the hell is it??

Sixteenth chapel anyone? Friend at school

No idea what my made her shepherds pie with as a child but I'm veggie now and it's just shepherds pie. Cottage pie might have been the common or posh version but can't remember. I'll speak to mother. Dreadful snob she is

It’s espresso, Not expresso
Sellotape is a brand name for sticky tape.its not an item called sellotape

@InAShizzle wait until I tell you about the other singer, Flo Rida and his name being Florida 😆

I was about 34 when I realised that yellow dandelions turn into dandelion clocks!

I’d just never thought about it before

@OdeToDiazepam

Then what is it?! 😂 I thought it was the temperature?! It has numbers on it hahaha

Franks and Archer, and Simon and Garth Funkel have made me laugh.

When I was little, I thought Sir Harry Secombe was Sir Harris Ecombe

I was older than I would like to admit when I discovered Wales was on the side of England and not on the bottom like I thought...

I wish I could remember the user who's husband thought countless tortoises were being murdered just so we could have terracotta pots in our gardens.
He thought his wife was unspeakably cruel when she started eyeing up a new plant pot. "Won't someone think of the tortoises!!!!"

EssentialHummus those were names that I didn't know how to say properly until I was in my twenties either - despite being half Irish! I'm sure there are plenty I still don't know too!

As we can see from this thread, the English language is a minefield!

Sparkly - The country is The Netherlands and Holland is an area in The Netherlands (or something like that, too lazy to actually Google to check)

Sellotape is a brand name for sticky tape.its not an item called sellotape

...but has come to mean sticky tape. Like the poster on my local Freecycle board asking for a Dyson hoover.

When I did Camp America ( about 29 years ago!) A middle aged, American woman asked me if Scotland was 3rd world country. Her reasoning was that she presumed there was no electricity in places as a colleague has visited and went on about how cold she was.

Of course I said yes it was 3rd world but the supply was getting better and we shared a TV between the street- we got it and the electric fire on a Sat morning.