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?

Canal and banal definitely rhyme in my British accent. And neither sound like they have an 'r' in them.

I don't understand why people think putting an r into a word that doesn't have one makes sense. I know some of you don't pronounce an r in some words, but surely you do in others? Like at the start of a word?

@CRbear me too!!

@GuillermoVanHelsing

Spendthrift. To me, that should mean a miserly, penny pinching person not some irresponsible cash splasher

Oh thank goodness I’m not the only one. I even had to google it once. It just seems the wrong meaning to me.

Unloosen and loosen mean the same thing.

Hoi polloi- means common people - I always thought it meant rich people

@parietal

I'd say 'canal' with an AL at the end, and 'banal' with an 'arl' at the end so I think they don't rhyme

It doesn’t have an r in it, they do rhyme.

buh/naal
kuh/nal

Banal has a different second A sound: it's longer.

Haha thank god people clarified that they think banal doesn't rhyme with canal because it's ba-nawl. I thought for a moment people were (mis)pronouncing it to rhyme with anal.

I still think banal rhymes with canal in British English. But accept might be different in other or regional accents.

"primeval, not corrupted by civilization" - so you could have a pristine landscape, unspoilt by development, but you are unlikely to have a pristine living room”

Desperate to make the obvious joke about my living room

DH says someone in his school pronounced banal to rhyme with anal and was never allowed to forget it.
He also says banal and canal do not rhyme, and he is from completely the other side of the UK to me and has a different accent.

The one I see written on here often is “draws” instead of “drawers”.

Which always confuses me because I think then the people actually say draws instead of drawers, not just they don’t know how to spell it , so basically they think they are called a chest of draws.

I think you'll find it's 'chester' rather than 'chest of'

I think banal and canal rhyme, I’m Scottish.

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

I agree banal does rhyme with canal

Not even slightly, You''re saying one of them wrong.

Isn't it odd that iterate and reiterate mean the same thing?

Not even slightly, You''re saying one of them wrong

Nope.

@Candleabra

I always think it's weird that flammable and inflammable mean the same thing
Erm, how to say this? They don't mean the same thing. 😂
.
If something is flammable it means it can be set fire to, such as a piece of wood. However, inflammable means that a substance is capable of bursting into flames without the need for any ignition. The opposite of both words is non-flammable.

I had a colleague whose mum thought that fornicating meant fawning...
Ooh, he's such a fornicator

When estate agents say a property is "deceptively spacious" ....
Sounds to me like "it looks spacious but this in fact is a deception ... this is in fact a small flat"

I once heard Zadie Smith say "banal" to rhyme with "anal". I still cringe for her.

I used to get peasant and pheasant mixed up and the infamous time when I was sent to buy tobacco and asked for a large bag of Golden Vagina.

Merriam-Webster is American, though.

Here's the usual pronunciation in the UK.

www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/pronunciation/english/banal

@Anoisagusaris

A lot of people on here don’t know the meaning of mortified.

Or the difference between “screaming” and “shouting”.

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."