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Original poster

To want to know something you wrongly believed was true all your life ?

729 replies

ChristineCagney11 · 27/05/2022 10:42

Posting to try and take our minds off bad things for a moment
I'm in my fifties someone on here posted about a "Party wall" a few weeks ago, I laughed because I thought they were mistaken, I have always thought the word for a wall between two properties was "Parting wall"
How did I not know ??
Also over the years when I've watched, usually men taking off the tops of beer bottles with their hands on US programmes.
I may or most definitely may have tried to do this myself not realising they have twisty tops in the US.
You ?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
21
Lifeafterloss22 · 27/05/2022 15:12

King regards………Kind Regards.
Why did nobody correct me? I email multi professionals on a daily basis (police, social care, nhs) the embarrassment.

Original poster
ChristineCagney11 · 27/05/2022 15:13

I think for the rest of my days I'm not going to be able to erase the phrase "Bird-wanked" from my mind 😳 but in the spirit of..if you adopt a word and make it your own it becomes less powerful I'll just start using it.
"Oh yes I'm very very tired, I mean I'm absolutely Bird-wanked"

OP posts:
SlowDog · 27/05/2022 15:13

Choccyp1g · 27/05/2022 12:59

Another one with the "elemenopee" letter.

DS in reception said, "Mummy I think we've learnt all the sounds now, except "elemenopee""

When me younger daughter was about 3 she used to say "eloemopee" instead of "elemenopee", by mistake. My older daughter, then about 6, thought she would help by patiently explaining how to say it right. Unfortunately younger daughter quickly realised it was much funnier to keep saying it wrong on purpose, and persisted until her big sister was in a fantastically furious rage.

JudgeJ · 27/05/2022 15:15

ohfook · 27/05/2022 11:41

That table mountain and Mount Kilimanjaro were one and the same.

You need an atlas I think!

HenBob · 27/05/2022 15:18

woofwoofbowwow · 27/05/2022 11:51

That Evelyn Waugh was a woman.

@woofwoofbowwow

The name Waugh reminds me of a pronunciation problem I had - I couldn't work out how to say Waugh so I'm a meeting with someone called Waugh I asked if he pronounced it "Wow" or "Woah". He was like "...War" DUH!

Mummyneedsacoffee · 27/05/2022 15:18

5128gap · 27/05/2022 11:32

That Ar-Kansas and Ar-kan-saw were two different states.

Arkansaw is a city , not a state 🙂

JudgeJ · 27/05/2022 15:21

When he was about 7 and we were watching a quiz or something like on TV brother asked Dad where Random was. Dad was puzzled until dopey brother explained that Random is where they go to draw the winner, The winner is drawn at random!
My mother expressed surprise that the horse called Bar ran in all the races. The TV gave the starting prices for the top horses then the rest were called Bar.

SlowDog · 27/05/2022 15:22

For many years I believed that Walt Disney had actually been frozen when he died.

And I thought that all the cats on the Isle of Man had no tails, very disappointing when I went there.

And I thought the word awry was pronounced aw-ree

Original poster
ChristineCagney11 · 27/05/2022 15:22

Lifeafterloss22 · 27/05/2022 15:12

King regards………Kind Regards.
Why did nobody correct me? I email multi professionals on a daily basis (police, social care, nhs) the embarrassment.

@Lifeafterloss22
Brilliant, much prefer yours anyway,
King regards Christine.

OP posts:
Shallistayorshalligo · 27/05/2022 15:23

I am foreign. For 30 years living in the UK I believed that kids sing “wind the bob-inob” . And I am a childminder 🤦🏼‍♀️ God knows, who is that bobinob 😂

HenBob · 27/05/2022 15:23

LovelyQuiche · 27/05/2022 12:19

“Dance, then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance Setee”

used to imagine an amazingly designed sofa

Loved it when I saw this live www.richardherring.com/lotds/

museumum · 27/05/2022 15:23

Arkansas is definitely a state!

autienotnaughty · 27/05/2022 15:24

SneezesHaveStarted · 27/05/2022 10:53

I genuinely believed until long after I had passed my own driving test, that it was illegal to drive along with the internal lights on in the car. And I just had to google it again now before I posted, to make ansolutysure that it really isn’t illegal 😃

Yep literally about 2/3 years ago. I'm 44.

ReachedTheEndofCake · 27/05/2022 15:25

@Mummyneedsacoffee
Arkansas is definitely at State. It’s a city in Kansas also, but definitely more known as a state.

givemushypeasachance · 27/05/2022 15:26

As a child I thought the symbol for the motorway was a monster or robot or something, I was probably of driving age when I eventually realised it was meant to be two roads going under a bridge. What has that got to do with motorways anyway!

When I started work, a colleague would put "TOIL" in her calendar sometimes and I thought she was joking about working hard. Didn't twig about 'time off in lieu' until someone explained where she was...

To want to know something you wrongly believed was true all your life ?
autienotnaughty · 27/05/2022 15:26

Coffeetree · 27/05/2022 11:09

When I was 45 my father told me that if you pee in a swimming pool, the water around you will turn blue. This is due to the chemical reaction of the urine's nitrogen and ammonia reacting with the chlorine.

When I was 45 I was talking about swimming with some friends and someone expressed worry about pee in the pool. I assured her no, you always know if someone has peed because you'll see the water turn blue around them.

Four decades. Well done Dad.

This too genuinely believed this well into adulthood

SheWoreYellow · 27/05/2022 15:27

LynneBenfield · 27/05/2022 12:35

Some of these are just different regional pronounciations, I think (brusk/broosk, allmond/arrmond).

Yeah. British pronunciation of brusque is broosk, US is brusk.

Almond is aah mond in the UK but the US aal mond is becoming more widely used.

Despinetta · 27/05/2022 15:28

For a long time I thought the moon was about 30 miles away. I think someone might have told me that France was about 30 miles away when I wasn’t paying attention properly.

autienotnaughty · 27/05/2022 15:28

Cattenberg · 27/05/2022 11:42

Two days ago, I realised that I may have been pronouncing the word “brusque” incorrectly all my life. I pronounced it “brusk” to rhyme with “husk”, but my colleague says “broosk”.

Are you northern? I say brusk.

LakieLady · 27/05/2022 15:29

FallopianTubeTrain · 27/05/2022 12:10

In the 80s when I was a child my mum and her friend used to go on a coach trip once a year to see the Blackpool illuminations. I was around 30 when I discovered that this was just a bunch of lights on the sea front and not a naturally occurring phenomenon like the northern lights.

I had the opposite!

Until I was well into my teens, I thought the Northern Lights were a man-made illumination thing.

Mybestyear · 27/05/2022 15:29

I thought that pork came from a cow until I was about 30 - I asked someone "how come a pig is called a porker but pork comes from a cow?". She stared at me in amazement and thought I was joking. My defence was "but you get pork chops" - not sure what the heck that has to do with anything!
DH thought St Pancras was St Pancreas. He also thought the words to the Steve Miller band song the Joker were "I'm a midnight toga" - I explained it was 'midnight toker' but never having so much as looked at a drug in his life didn't know 'toker' was a word.

ReachedTheEndofCake · 27/05/2022 15:30

@Mummyneedsacoffee ooooh I’ve done some googling. Arkansaw (with w) in Wisconsin! Learning new things, thanks 😁

HenBob · 27/05/2022 15:32

BeyondPurpleTulips · 27/05/2022 14:49

I was an adult (I'm not sure but it may even have been after my biology degree), before I realised that women didn't have one fewer rib.

bloody church school... 🙄

@BeyondPurpleTulips I thought women had one extra rib than men..I need to Google if that's true now...

HenBob · 27/05/2022 15:34

Aroundtheworldin80moves · 27/05/2022 14:54

I thought the star wars characters had Light Savers. (Lightsabres)

Also my Grandad told me that only male robins had red chests.

I thought they were called life savers, as having them could save your life!

Mummyneedsacoffee · 27/05/2022 15:35

ReachedTheEndofCake · 27/05/2022 15:25

@Mummyneedsacoffee
Arkansas is definitely at State. It’s a city in Kansas also, but definitely more known as a state.

I know, I said Arkansaw (with the W) is a city not a state 🙂it’s in Wisconsin x