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?

I always get confused about whether flammable or inflammable means it would catch on fire easily....

Was trying to figure out how canal and banal do not rhyme as they do in an Irish accent - seems banal is more like ba-nol? Canal rhymed with channel in my head when I read it as a child. Made perfect sense for an artificially constructed waterway. Of course chasm had the same starting sound as channel.

I'm sure there are probably lots of words that I don't know how to pronounce but I'm very familiar with from reading.

banal definitely does rhyme with canal
No. Canal is pronounced Can-al and banal is pronounced ba-narl.

@BlueBirdGreenFence

I only discovered last year banal doesn't ryhme with canal .

This is why I stopped listening to audio books. Couldn't cope with the embarrassment of how many words I've been pronouncing wrong for years.

An intelligent friend of mine pronounced banal to rhyme with anal, I haven't mentioned it but I probably should as she's a senior academic and it might be awkward for her one day 😂

@BlueBirdGreenFence

I only discovered last year banal doesn't ryhme with canal .

This is why I stopped listening to audio books. Couldn't cope with the embarrassment of how many words I've been pronouncing wrong for years.

Banal does rhyme with Canal! (In the UK)

@Newuser123123 banal rhyming with anal is the US pronounciation

@Bluntness100

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

Me too! And no 'r' anywhere.

'Brackish' for me - and the friend I waswalking with on the moors when we found out we were wrong about its meaning.
We both thought it meant brownish - the colour of the streams you often get on moorland.
Turns out it means slightly salty - which those morland streams don't tend to be.
We don't know how two otherwise articulate and reasonably well read women who grew up miles apart would both have exactly the same misconception.

[quote Calmandmeasured1]**@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.[/quote]
They do mean the same thing: something that is easily set on fire.

I can never remember what is meant when the weather is 'mild'... is mild cool or warm?!

@BlueBirdGreenFence

But it does rhyme with canal.

Sometimes people rlnarrating audiobooks dont pronounce things correctly, or their accent makes it sound funny.

I’ve seen ‘floor‘ used here to mean ‘ground’.

Canal and banal rhyme in my accent.

Brackish - yes definitely no idea what that meant. I thought it had something to do with bracken.

If definitely a chest of drawers! It’s funny how people hear something incorrectly and then use it that way. If you think about it clothes were probably stored in a chest which then over time had drawers added to it.

My brain really doesn't like the way that spendthrift means the opposite of thrifty. Does anyone know why that is?

Misuse of mortified get my goat!

@Calmandmeasured1

Nope. In the UK they rhyme and whether in the UK or the US, there is no r sound in there.

@thistimelastweek

Fulsome seems to have fallen into misuse. Fulsome praise was never a good thing.

I had to check this out and one of the synonyms listed was "unctuous", argh!

"Nonplussed" is another oddity that usually arises on threads like these...

I did think when the first canal/banal post was made that there was a 97% chance of an argument about rhoticity brewing...

The words banal and canal sound completely different. They don’t rhyme unless people are pronouncing banal as b’nal or canal as c’nahl
which are both wrong.

I clearly can't spell either! I discovered it DOES rhyme with canal! I was running round saying it as in anal with a b at the start

[quote WhereverIGoddamnLike]@BlueBirdGreenFence

But it does rhyme with canal.

Sometimes people rlnarrating audiobooks dont pronounce things correctly, or their accent makes it sound funny.[/quote]
It doesn’t. Not according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

@Flaunch

In the UK, they both sound the same.
Bah-nal
Cah-nal

I don't agree with all of these but here's a list of words that also mean their opposites:
www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their-own-opposites

@GuillermoVanHelsing

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

I agree with this. It just doesn't seem to suit its meaning does it. Another word that sounds wrong to me is 'vindicate'. It just feels like I'm using it wrong even though I don't!

Banal has about three different ways it can be said. All depends on where you are from. You will find proof all over the internet that your pronunciation is correct - no matter which way you say it

(One of them does indeed rhyme with "canal". Well depending on how you say canal (Okay I think that there's one way - ignoring the different stresses of accents )