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?

Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. There are variations within the U.K. and around the anglophone world. For some of us they rhyme. For others they do not. The original poster has nothing to be embarrassed about. The end.

@LizzieAnt, in my local English accent most ‘a’ vowels are fairly short, bath to rhyme with Cath rather than bah th. I’ve probably only heard fairly posh people say banal, so maybe that’s why I’d pronounce them differently?

My word is ‘fastidious’, to me it means hard working. Or should mean! I cannot get the real meaning to stick either. DH always slags me off and checks if I know what it means every now and again and I can’t remember. Need to look it up again! ‘Very attentive to and concerned about detail’.

@Twattergy

For years I thought it was 'remuneration'. Still don't really understand why it is remuneration, when it's like, about numbers innit?!?!?!

You have written the same word twice. I’m assuming you thought it was ‘reNumeration’? As I would have thought the same until you have pointed it out!

Pps. Canal/banal certainly rhyme in Scotland.

grimace
I still don't know what face to pull lol

Fastidious means careful about the details.

I think the other meaning of quite (apart from "a bit") is not "a lot," but "completely."

Eg - "he was quite dead." So in the Jane Austen example the guy is "eligible beyond all doubt."

I think of myself as very widely read - hey, I've completed the 50 book challenge the last few years.

I was surprised to hear Geoffrey Palmer described as lugubrious in his obituaries. I thought it meant long winded, talked too much, hogged the limelight.

It actually means: looking or sounding sad or dismal

Why did I not know that?! [shocked] [shocked]

GEEZ! Can't even get the smileys right!

In the US, "quite" is more commonly used as an intensifier, like very. It's just a difference in the way the same language has moved apart between countries. Americans still use a lot of words that have fallen out of use in the UK like faucet and skillet tap and frying pan in everyday speech.

I'm late to this. But glad I read it.

I thought banal rhymed with anal.

Gregg Wallace just used the word 'unctuous' on MC - incorrectly!

@IdrisElbow

A part of my city is actually called 'Salubrious Passage'.... it's ironic because it's definitely not very salubrious and I often think someone must have been taking the piss when they named it

I wonder if it was bit like our 'cour des miracles' - sarcastically named because the scammers or beggars who'd just conned someone out of money for their terrible illness/sickness went back to their cour (courtyard) and voilà, magically better/healed.

Greg Wallace is a greengrocer... greengrocers' apostrophe errors are legendary.

[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]
You are right! I realisedI thought he does because my DH always sings that line loudly over the top, and does sing TOOTH. I am maligning Mr Rogers.

Riders! Another odd word. Can mean the list of stuff a performer asks for in their dressing room. Legend has it that some rock band wanted M&Ms with the red ones taken out, and Mariah Carey asked for a basket of kittens to pet.

The M &M's one was about making sure a venue fully read a technical rider - the specification for stage and PA equipment and so on. They're really important and have a lot to do with keeping people safe. That line was in there to make sure the whole rider had been read - if there were no red m&m's, they could be reasonably sure everything else had been followed as well. I think it was Van Halen, but I can't remember...

Hah, it was Van Halen, but it was the brown m&m's the evil bastards.

@CeramicGuineaPig . I did ask Alexa to play it for me to check before I posted!

@MillicentMartha
I say bath like you do then
I love seeing the way language has changed since Austen's time too. Another example is the word unexceptional. in Pride and Prejudice, for example, the women want to make unexceptional marriages. That word would be understood as a negative today, but it was meant in the sense 'can't take exception to'.

I'm intrigued by the banal/canal thing.

Are people who think they rhyme pronouncing them:
ban-al and can-al
or
ban-AHL and can-AHL?

@BalloonSlayer

I think the other meaning of quite (apart from "a bit") is not "a lot," but "completely."

Eg - "he was quite dead." So in the Jane Austen example the guy is "eligible beyond all doubt."

Ah, you’re quite right! Not just meaning very, but completely.

@amicissimma

I'm intrigued by the banal/canal thing.

Are people who think they rhyme pronouncing them:
ban-al and can-al
or
ban-AHL and can-AHL?

I pronounce them ban-al and can-al...that is, short a's (like in apple) for all the a's.

Nice is a good one.

It used to mean subtle or slight - as in "is it flammable or inflammable? It's a nice difference.

Now it also means something/someone being described (moderately) favourably,

Words do change meaning of course. But lots of people get plenty of them wrong. Me absolutely included.

Not quite the same but I’ve always loved the idea of “purpose built flats” as it makes me imagine somewhere that there might be accidentally built ones. Maybe by a builder who’d had a few too many the night before.