To have misunderstood the meaning of this word my whole life?

[Lemonsaretheonlyfruit]

Salubrious.

I always thought it meant luxurious. Turns out it means healthy or health giving. (My 10 year old DS asked me this morning so I looked it up just to double check I was giving him the correct definition!)

Who knew? (Probably everyone apart from me). Any more of these to share?

@GoJoe2020

I'd say you were saying the man wrong. Your accent doesn't trump mine

It's not about accent in this instance. Unless you can tell me which accent says can-arl...

That is what many English people write to denote a long “a”. It is massively confusing if you pronounce your “r”s, because that would have them saying “canarrl” like a pirate!

They put in r where you don't pronounce it (ban arl)

And don't put in r where you should. (Like draws instead of drawers)

I always thought that diaphonous meant fabric that was floaty in an attractive, romantic way. I only realised it means transparent after a friend had remarked on my diaphonous skirt at the beginning of an outing on a very hot summer's day and all was later revealed by strong sunlight when we were miles from home with no covering. I did not have the legs or figure of Lady Diana Spencer who was sinilarly caught out about that time. (The friend had not told me the correct meaning.)

@Hangingover

I thought calling a spade a spade was about shovels. I said it for years. Mortified.

What do you think it is about now? People who want to say they are even more straight-taking than a person who calls a spade a spade will say, jokingly, “I call a spade a shovel”. Does it come from playing cards originally rather than digging implements?

@Cattenberg

The word “barely” still confuses me. For example, in Angela’s Ashes, there was “barely half a pound of flour”. Does that mean exactly half, slightly more than half, or slightly less than half?

Until recently, I thought erstwhile meant “esteemed” and august meant “fat”.

As a child, I was alarmed whenever Winnie Mandela appeared on TV. The newsreaders always referred to “Nelson Mandela and his estranged wife, Winnie”. For some reason, I thought estranged meant “insane and dangerous”.

Lol, maybe you were thinking of 'deranged'.

Not so much a word as a particular usage... When Americans say "most all" or "most everything", what do they mean, most or all/everything?!

I itch to correct people who say 'tenants' when they mean 'tenets', or 'weary' when they mean 'wary.

@TellingBone

Not a single word but:

Fine-tooth comb

You often hear people say, 'Fine TOOTHcomb' with the emphasis on the middle syllable. Which makes it sound like a comb for the teeth, rather than a comb WITH fine or narrow teeth.

You're all saying it now.

This is how Kenny Rogers sings it in Islands in the Stream, it always annoys me!

Or “adverse” when they mean “averse”.

@CeramicGuineaPig no he doesn’t. He stresses the “comb” bit because it’s the end of the line and the (half) rhyme with “unknown” in the previous line.

I always thought the word "autoclave" sounded like a massive terrifying machine covered in knives, like that thing that that Sarah and Hoggle run away from in this scene in Labyrinth. The reality, when I discovered it, was spectacularly underwhelming.

[quote CheetasOnFajitas]@CeramicGuineaPig no he doesn’t. He stresses the “comb” bit because it’s the end of the line and the (half) rhyme with “unknown” in the previous line.[/quote]
At a push Kenny (because he is singing) puts equal stress on both “tooth” and “comb” but he absolutely does not stress “tooth” more than “comb” which is what @TellingBone was complaining about.

Was surprised to read one day that vital used to be synonymous with fatal

@Bumpsadaisie

Also people who say "evidently" when they mean "apparently".

So I would say - where I had heard the news from someone else and so was not fully sure of it - "apparently a teacher at school has Covid".

Whereas some people use "evidently" instead of apparently, so "evidently there is a Covid case at school!"

Sounds all wrong to me as I use evidently for when something is very clear. Eg "Sarah is crying in the loo. She is evidently having a really hard time right now, so let's cut her some slack."

This is probably Jilly Cooper's fault. Her novels are riddled with this particular misuse of 'evidently'.

I remember reading the death announcements in our local paper when I was a child and being struck by how many of the deceased had unpunctual partners, e.g. “Doreen, dearly-loved wife of the late Brian”

The word 'idyllic'. A lot of people seem to pronounce it like ideal-ic. (TV announcers etc.) In fact it starts with a short 'i' sound. It has nothing to do with the word 'ideal'. Bugs me a lot!

For years I thought "salubrious" meant "delicious", because my dad would scoff a meal and say "This is salubrious". Like you, I was surprised when I actually looked it up and found it meant healthy/ health-giving.

It just sound as though it should mean "delicious" . . .

Brackish' for me - and the friend I waswalking with on the moors when we found out we were wrong about its meaning.

@Scarby9 were you walking on moors with excellent mobile reception, or did you ask the opinion of a passer-by?

I knew, because I did Latin at school.

Mind you, it was so long ago it was barely a dead language.

@Elbels

I always thought sight for sore eyes meant you looked awful / horrifying.

Doesn't it? Julia in Brookside said it about a bride and she was always mixing up her expressions so she was trying, and failing imo, to say the bride looked nice.

@OddHoleySocks

According to merriam webster

'How do you pronounce banal?
There are several pronunciations of banal, but the three most common are \BAY-nul, \buh-NAHL, and \buh-NAL\ (which rhymes with canal)'

So we are all correct

Merriam Webster is an American dictionary though.

This is probably Jilly Cooper's fault. Her novels are riddled with this particular misuse of 'evidently'.

Maybe Jilly knew all along, but was writing characters who misused the word?

@Gwenhwyfar maybe the scriptwriters were also mixed up.

A sight for sore eyes is definitely something that looks lovely. I presume because the idea is that if your eyes are sore, looking at something nice will make them feel better.

@MaelyssQ

I used to get prevaricate and procrastinate mixed up.

Well I thought they meant more or less the same thing but your post made me google and it appears I am wrong

I have to sit on my hands on here when I see discrete / discreet misused. Really quite different meanings too.

Discreet - keeping something quiet
Discrete - stand alone

Also advice / advise

“I asked her advise but I was discrete about it “ nooooooo