What commonly known thing did you learn at an embarrassingly older age?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That a "yamaka" and a yarmulke are the same thing. I just thought I had never seen "yamaka" written out.

Dh thought “epitome” was pronounced ep-ih-tohm, and didn’t realize it was the same word that we all pronounce as ee-pit-oh-me.

That's what I thought about "segue." I thought the word pronounced 'seg-way' was like a way in, like an entrance into a conversation, and "segue" (rhymes with 'weed' in my mind) was like one thing merging into another.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How to tell left from right. I am semi-ambidextrous. High school marching band.

I learned this in college. The LEFT hand makes the L (when you're looking at it). The right hand is what you put to your forehead to indicate the person looking AT you is, indeed, the loser.
Thank you, Clueless.

I was 32 when my sister pointed out that it is "Sherbet" not "Sherbert".

I was today years old. Thank you for educating me!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That realtor is not pronounced "real-uh-tor"

again, this is regional.

Jewelry and Realtor are pronounced differently depending on where you were raised.

Huh. I always just assumed that these were simply commonly mispronounced words, rather than words with multiple pronunciations that are considered correct. Like mixing up the vowels in “nuclear” by pronouncing it “nook-you-lar.”

NO, no, no -- "nook-you-lar" is just plain wrong! Not regional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How to pump gas but in my defense I am from NJ

This comment reminded me of something I recently learned:

That there is a little arrow by your gas gauge on your dashboard that tells you what side of the car the gas tank is on. Who knew!

I didn’t know. I’ll check next time I’m in car!

I checked mine and don't have one.

If you don't have one then your car must be more than 12 years old?

Also I believe European cars have the arrow pointing right, while Asian cars have arrow pointing left

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Being a reader more than a talker, I grew up mispronouncing several common words based on their phonetic spelling. Misled (MYzled), Infrared (InFRAIRed), etc.

YES! To this day, I still hear “inFRAIRed” in my head.

Mel - ANN -choh- lee (melancholy)
MEN -a - grrr--ee (menagerie)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That realtor is not pronounced "real-uh-tor"

again, this is regional.

Jewelry and Realtor are pronounced differently depending on where you were raised.

Huh. I always just assumed that these were simply commonly mispronounced words, rather than words with multiple pronunciations that are considered correct. Like mixing up the vowels in “nuclear” by pronouncing it “nook-you-lar.”

NO, no, no -- "nook-you-lar" is just plain wrong! Not regional.

Nook - You - Lur IS regional! If you're from Texas, this is how you say it even though it is clearly spelled differently than it's being pronounced.

[Anonymous]

" How to tell left from right. "

Baseball: right-handers hit to left field, left-handers hit to right field. Odd that I never confuse left field and right field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That realtor is not pronounced "real-uh-tor"

again, this is regional.

Jewelry and Realtor are pronounced differently depending on where you were raised.

Huh. I always just assumed that these were simply commonly mispronounced words, rather than words with multiple pronunciations that are considered correct. Like mixing up the vowels in “nuclear” by pronouncing it “nook-you-lar.”

NO, no, no -- "nook-you-lar" is just plain wrong! Not regional.

Nook - You - Lur IS regional! If you're from Texas, this is how you say it even though it is clearly spelled differently than it's being pronounced.

It may be regional . . . but it's still wrong. This is not a subjective question. Says a lot for the Texas educational system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am very well traveled, but just recently realized that Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas are geographically the same city. The Missouri River defines the state borders and just splits the city in half. I always thought these were two completely different cities nowhere near each other.

are they the same city then - i thought they just bordered each other. surely they aren't administered by the same local government for instance?

different states, different cities, divided by a river, but sharing the same name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve shared this one before. When my husband started a new job and purchased some very nice dress shirts, I wanted to be helpful and get them ready for him. I opened them, removed all the straight pins, threw out the cardboard under the collars and the little plastic tabs tucked into the collars. I washed and ironed them and had them all ready to wear. The first time my dh put one on, he asked where the collar stays were. I had no idea what a collar stay was. I felt so bad that I went back to Nordstrom and bought brass collar stays, which he still uses 20 years later.

Never realized that! I thought this is why they were starched!

I am pretty confident that my husband dies not know this either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Being a reader more than a talker, I grew up mispronouncing several common words based on their phonetic spelling. Misled (MYzled), Infrared (InFRAIRed), etc.

I proudly stood up to do a book report in 8th grade, and pronounced a quote with the word chaos as "chah- oss" and the teacher laughed and called me out.

I also had only ever read the word sonofabitch, and didn't really know it was 3 words ... So I got really angry at my cousin at a family reunion and yelled YOU SAH-NOFFFFA-BITCH! I had no clue it was son- of - a - bitch.

In my high school speech class, we were all assigned a teacher to interview and then we had to give a biographical speech about the teacher to our class. One girl told the class that her assigned teacher’s father had “frickently” died. After giving our speech, we had to leave the classroom for a few minutes to allow the speech teacher and the rest of the class a chance to discuss our speech and craft some compliments and constructive feedback. When this girl left the room, everyone was trying to guess what “frickently died” meant. The conclusion we reached was that the teacher’s father must have recently died, the girl was confusing the word “frequently” with the word “recently,” and that she was also mispronouncing “frequently.” None of this would have raised an eyebrow if she was not a native English speaker, but English was the only language she spoke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I always thought there was a saying “we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”. As an adult I learned it was two separate sayings.

Well, now that we do have it, I think we should use it! I love it!

[Anonymous]

I threw a big dinner party last year and served quinoa. I pronounced it quinn-o-a. Everyone laughed at me, so it was a little embarrassing, but I'd never heard it pronounced before!

[Anonymous]

That you are supposed to give a hostess gift when you go to someone's house. I grew up middle class, and the only people we ever entertained were lower middle class family.

I learned this in college. Extremely embarrassing.

[Anonymous]

What do you call a suitcase with wheels that you put in the overhead bin on an airplane?

I always called it a rollerboard but someone recently told me that it's roll-aboard. And google tells me it's up for debate.