To ask for your misheard common sayings?

[TheGhostsOfMeAndYou]

My husband thinks I am ridiculous that I always thought the saying "another think coming" was "another thing coming"

It's taken me 38 years to realise this and I now feel rather silly.

Error

Some of my favourite people are Scots. Shakespeare wrote a Scottish play, he also wrote "to be, or not to be". My mates north of the border - though maybe not across the whole country - feel it's NOT to be, hence statements like "this needs to be finished". They also think 'outwith' the box. Bless 'em.

I suspect that the think/thing mix up has come about because most English speakers tend not to emphasise the last letter (unless they're from Birmingham).

So, think and thing often just sound like 'thin'. Similarly, words such as drink or bring when being spoken just sound like 'drin' or 'brin'.

On the ‘another think’ ‘another thing’ argument, this BBC article from yesterday has ‘sic’ on one of the messages where think has been used. So the BBC must be ‘team thing’.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-67490215.amp

This one is probably so old now that the incorrect saying has become acceptable: the correct idiom for saying (for example ) a son closely resembles his father is that the son is the "spit and image" (not spitting image) of this father.

For years I thought "no holds barred" was "no holes barred." What these mysterious holes were I had no idea.

Eh... what...?

It's not hand-gliding? 😲

Well fuck me, every day is a school day right enough!

Not the bank. Employees of whichever company I am purchasing from

Also Rindercella slopped her dripper.

And because American soldiers brought the phrase to the States where it morphed into "thing" and has now bounced around geographically and become acceptable as an alternative and stand alone phrase. (Not to mention the, ahem, British heavy metal band Judas Priest song). 🤓🇨🇦☺️🤘

No holds barred comes from wrestling .....

Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more

no holds barred
phrase of hold

1. (in wrestling) with no restrictions on the kinds of holds that are used.

• used to convey that no rules or restrictions apply in a conflict or dispute.
• "he's willing to take on all comers, no holds barred, for a good political argument"

That's more pedantry than getting the words completely wrong like most of the examples on this thread, though. My dad used to take issue with sayings like this:

"Money is the root of all evil" (it's the love of money)

I have a colleague who says "maison d'etre" instead of "raison d'etre".

I find it really annoying when people say invite when they mean invitation. I’m not sure why it annoys me so much (I don’t get so annoyed if people say quote instead of quotation) but it does.

And people using slither when they mean sliver.

People who say 'bias' when they mean 'biased'.

"This news report is so bias."

Oh god, yes! Absolutely infuriating.

I had a lovely friend who always used to say 'A leper never changes its spots.' Wouldn't be told it was Leopard. makes me smile whenever I think of her.

It is absolutely think and not thing.

Surely [sic] was in the original message that has been screenshotted. The teacher is wrong about it, the BBC have made no comment.

I think rest bite is absolutely ludicrous! Not cute in the least.

Not that surprised about a teacher getting it wrong. My friend's son wrote "I walked past the church" and his English teacher crossed out "past" and wrote "passed"!

When my friend went to the teacher and told her she was wrong the teacher was adamant she wasn't

I don't agree. Most people I know say thing and think with the last letter clearly pronounced. Me and DH are from London as are most of our friends

That's more pedantry than getting the words completely wrong ...
I don't agree. It's not even 'all the right words but not necessarily in the right order'.

It's the other way for transportation: that's what we used to call it too until we decided to use the shorter transport, while the Americans have kept it as it was. Import is similar, with our modern shortening of importation.

I used to see ‘rest bite’ a lot on a forum for carers of people with dementia.
Pernickety old pedant though I am, I couldn’t get too steamed up about it in that context - the poor things were desperate for a ‘bite’ of rest.