To have completely misunderstood the meaning of some sayings?

[KermitTheToad]

I only found out today that the term Social Butterfly refers to someone who is outgoing and loves social events. I thought it meant you didn't like social events, as in you would fly away and avoid them. I also until recently thought that a Spendthrift is somebody who is frugal in their spending. I assumed that as thrifty meant not being wasteful, that Spendthrift meant being careful in what you spent.
YANBU..I see where you are coming from.
YABU.. You are a wally, go back to school!

Until recently I thought that if you were “gunning for someone” you were on their side, like providing defensive fire rather than attacking.

When I was a kid I had a story book (mini novel, no pictures) in which the child found half a crown under the car. I thought it was a surprising thing to find.. it was some years later before I realised it was a coin not an actual half a crown!

I don't think that's a thing

Ooohhhhh.... I thought it meant a trapped pig too, until literally just now....

Really?? I don't buy that. I will happily recant if I find such a word in a dictionary.

Bomsitit as a noun meaning a mess is the new chester draws

OP will end up a social piranha at this rate

And what about the road works sign my cousin asked "why is the man putting up a brolly?"

I found out that "scuttlebutt" originated in about 1800 as a naval term

There used to be a cask of fresh drinking water on deck (a scuttled butt) and sailors used to congregate to take a drink and exchange gossip -so literally the original water cooler gossip site!

You might want to read the thread … a spendthrift is the opposite of frugal.

I thought it was Audrey 2!

Bomsisit is interesting, we'd often use 'bombsite' to describe a mess here
I've noticed on social media, only in the last year or so, that a lot of people use 'mortified' when they mean 'horrified'. I was so confused!

Yes - thrift used to mean savings/wealth

So a spendthrift was literally someone spending their savings

🤣😂🤣🤣

Deceptively large = larger than it first seemed. E.g this cottage is deceptively large...it's much more spacious than it looks from outside.

Deceptively small = smaller than you'd think. E.g. 'this handbag can hardly fit anything in it, it's deceptively small!'

A local newspaper had an article about a musician who'd been appearing with celebrities ' "Young Musician mixes with the hoi polloi" 🙄

My neighbour thought 'Slow School Ahead' referred to the special needs school.

🤣

Swings and roundabouts always found a strange one, also a catch 22 situation??

Clearly you are not one who knows how many beans make five...

I actually thought apes had been trained to bear arms as a child. Gorilla warfare. When I think of some of the daft things that have happened in the world this isn't actually as bonkers

Same.

I also still struggle a bit with protagonists being called “hero”, simply because they are the main character.

i know that the meaning of hero is nothing like superhero, but I still finding it jarring to hear of some weedy, nondescript protagonist being described as “our hero”.

To be fair I think that one has been confusing people for a couple of hundred years!

@CaveMum you can take the horse to the water but you can't make it drink..

Catch-22 I think comes from the novel by Joseph Heller - as in I think he coined the phrase rather than used an existing one.

I found the novel pretty impossible to understand (and I’m quite good at reading as I’m a lawyer …who also had to produce my full university transcripts to get my training contract!)