The things you don’t know might just bite you in the…well, not the ass, exactly.

in BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN, Random Crap

Last week I was discussing the taint with my friends (as you do) and wondered aloud how that part of your body even got a name and one of my friends was like, “Seriously?  Because it t’aint your butthole and it t’aint your genitals.”  And I just sat there with my mind blown because I HAD NO IDEA.

This is exactly what friends are for.  To help you with your taint.  Not literally though.  Being a friend means never having to physically help with someone else’s taint. That should go on a greeting card.

Anyway, I was just thinking about all of the other things that I don’t know that are common knowledge and I wish I had a list of them but I don’t because I don’t know them yet.  So if you have any super-obvious things you found out much later than everyone else please share them here because that way I’ll feel better about myself and maybe we’ll all learn something.

The more you know…

PS. I just made my newest educational stationary:

card

 

363 thoughts on “The things you don’t know might just bite you in the…well, not the ass, exactly.”

Read comments below or add one.

  3. Is it wrong that your Twitter post about this made me think there really needs to be an apostrophe in “friend’s taint?” Google, you fail at grammar.

  6. i was way too old when i found out that the word “infrared” is not the past tense of the verb “to infrare” which i deduced was something you did to light.

  7. Ohm I almost forgot my favorite. I say this to my grown kids all the time :You’re smart, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Puts their problem back on them! LOL

  8. Cows only produce milk after giving birth.
    Horses and hippos sweat through their skin. Dogs and cats don’t.

  9. Here is something I figured out as a math teacher, that might help some people.
    If you think about a number line, which looks like this the left side is where the smaller numbers are and the right side is the bigger numbers. That is why is greater than. It represents the arrows at the ends of the number line. Tada!

    Not as interesting as taints, but much more likely to help your kids with math!

  10. I just learned how birds mate… It’s weird that I never thought of the fact that they are smooth as a Barbie doll down there

  11. I literally have not stopped laughing at your blog since I’ve started reading it. Just kind of stumbled upon it, and I’m so glad I did!

  12. Apparently boneless hams do not come from boneless pigs, raised in vats of water. Who knew?

  15. The timing of this made me laugh because we were just discussing what a chode was. The conversation came up when I showed my co workers your “unt” mug and then Zazzle had a plethora of similar mugs, one with “hode.” They didn’t know and I told them to google it. Then I was telling my husband this morning of my crazy work conversation and the kids overheard and wanted to know where exactly the chode was. Still laughing….

  16. I had no idea what a queef, however you spell it, was until I was 40. I knew that it existed just not that it had a name and was a topic of much discussion among people. Great, now I know what vaginal farts are. Thank you for not preparing me for the world, college!

  17. Ahhhh the taint. Second to the gunt*. You know, when a gut and cunt slllllowwwwly morph and become one? (*See Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Or Mama June. Whichevs.)

  18. When I was 18 at worked as a cashier at a grocery store and some of the guys I worked with teased me about being a vegetarian. One of them asked, “Do you eat tube steak?” and they all snickered. I didn’t know what that was. I thought it was a cut of meat like sirloin, so I said no. Fast forward 20 years and thanks to the internet I quite by chance found out the true meaning (slang for male genetalia). I would love to go back in time and say, “You guys are a bunch of d*cks, but you know what, bravo, because that’s actually kind of funny”.

  19. I didn’t know that brown spots on bananas weren’t “sugar spots” like my dad had told me. I was 30 when my best friend told me the truth. Thanks, dad. Oh, and in high school chemistry class I learned gaseous is not pronounced “gas-ee-us.” That’s another one from my dad when he was feeling farty.

  20. Oh! And striped sheets always run top to bottom, never side to side. VERY useful w King size and Cal King sheets that are basically square. Also, when making the bed, the top sheet goes on finished side down so that when you fold back to top edge you see the “right side” of the sheet. I think that taps out my esoteric trivia regarding bedding.

  22. It’s pronounced pen-EL-oh-pee, not pen-eh-lope. Only saw it in books up until then. Still don’t know an actual person in my life with that name, so it just served to make me feel stupid.

  23. I had to explain to my mother what a rimjob was. She asked my dad if he knew and he said, “yes I know what they are and they’re for disgusting people”. I also had to teach her what a taint is. Basically, I’m her walking urban dictionary.

  25. I was at an outdoor concert with my 21 year old daughter (yes we share music) and I kept smelling skunk. I commented on it wondering what a skunk was doing so close to this crowd of people (“It must be close by to smell that strong.”) She informed me that the smell of skunk was not skunk, but marijuana smoke. I lost many cool points that day.

  26. My wife didn’t know what the real words were for the song “Mairzy Doats” until I explained it.

    And just a few months ago, I learned that the big warships called Dreadnoughts are called that because they fear nothing. Blindingly obvious, but I’d never thought of it before.

  27. I pronounced “sepsis” as “seepus” ’cause my granny pronounced it that way. I didn’t know they were the same word until college.

  32. I didn’t even know what taint meant and had to check the “Urban Dictionary”. I also had to look up bae the other day. Is this a sign of getting older? I’m only 35.

  33. The word taint was explained to me (as above) by the same guy who explained what this gesture is: Raise your pointer, middle and pinky finger (pointer and middle pressed together) and keep your ring finger and thumb tucked in. It’s called The Shocker. Know why? His explanation was, “Two in the pink and one in the stink.” Hopefully that doesn’t require further explanation.

    Not sure why I’m friends with this guy.

  35. I once played a game of scrabble with my grandmother. She played the word taint, My mother, my boyfriend, and I burst into giggles. Grandma then asked my boyfriend is he thought taint was funny. There was no controlling the laughter then. She then played the word cum and it was the naughtiest most hilarious game of scrabble ever. My favorite quote from the whole game, “Oh I’ve used cum lots of time.”

  36. Apparently I needed to be as old as I am today before I learned that “taint” is a thing.

  39. I thought “taint” was another vulgar name for a vag and actually had to look it up when I was reading this post…don’t I feel dumb.

  40. If ‘taint’ was new to you, you may not be aware of ‘butterface’ for a girl with a desirable body but unappealing face… as in “she’s got a great body…BUT HER face…”

    Fun international fact : the French equivalent for the Butterface is ‘crevette’, literally ‘shrimp’ since you remove the head before eating.

    The more you know…

    PS I know everyone links to their blog posts, but THIS one is tailor made for Bloggessians.

  41. It took me longer than I want to admit to realize that when the vending machine said “uend” that u was actually a v.

  43. I thought this was fairly common knowledge, but I blew my mother’s mind with it. Animals that evolved as predators have eyes more in the front of their skulls. Animals that evolved more as prey creatures have eyes more toward the sides of their skulls. Predators can afford to focus more straight ahead, but prey animals need to have a wider range of vision to the sides to avoid being snuck up on. So even a big animal like a horse or a cow, if you look at them, eyes on the sides of the head. And they tend to be skittish and unpredictable if you run up on them as a result, even though they’re huge. Whereas a dog or a cat, smaller animal, but eyes in front. Also us. So there you go. I’m not entirely sure if this holds true as much with birds or fish, but it is pretty much the rule with mammals. So science?

  46. and just now in the comments, I just learned that “cum” is not just another word for ejaculation but an actual REAL WORD in the dictionary (Merriam-Webster) eek…

  47. In college, I was known as the accidental pervert because I would often stumble into sex slang without realizing it. There were several occasions, but my favorite was the time I was discussing the possibility of creating a Barbershop Whistling Quartet with my friend Becky. We were both accomplished at whistling, and we liked the idea of creating such a musical group. I saw one problem with our plan, however. “No one can whistle a bass,” I mused. “We’ll have to have a hummer to accompany us.”
    Becky (who was rather prudish) turned purple and squeaked.
    “What did I say?” I asked her.
    She whispered “hummer!” but would not tell me what it meant. I looked across the room and saw our friend Ryan. “Would Ryan know what it means?” I asked. She nodded, and I went over to be embarrassingly schooled on oral sex slang.
    Accidental pervert, that’s me.

  49. The official, plumbing-industry-wide term for a very short length of pipe is “nipple.” In other words, there are real plumbers and contractors who, as part of their actual jobs, must occasionally walk into plumbing supply places and ask: “Can I see your four-inch nipples?”

  50. I found out in college that I had been spelling some words wrong my entire life… like laundry (laundrey) and blonde (blond). I am the poster child for the ‘Spell Check” generation.

  51. I learn the most interesting things here. I didn’t even know about this name. Just think of all the double-entendres I have been missing!

  52. Here’s a joke: Why did Santa only go out with seven reindeer? Because Comet had to stay home and clean the sink.

    As a kid, I thought this was hilarious. Only when I was an adult did I get the Comet Cleanser part of it. I would have thought it was just as funny if it were Donner.

    Keith, Minister of Pie

  53. I didn’t know what being “into Greek” meant until about 6 months ago (liking teh buttsex). I’m 43. I should have known something so dirty by now. I’m thoroughly ashamed of my sheltered existence.

  54. Lesson learned. Had not heard the word used that way. When I was little my mother always referred to vaginas as our “possible.” When my sister and I were in the bath, she’d remind us – don’t forget to wash your possible. When I grew up I asked where she got that word, because no one I knew had ever heard that word used that way. She said that’s what her grandmother always called it.

    A few years after that I read Maya Angelou’s I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS. Somewhere in those luminous pages, there it was: Angelou’s grandmother telling her to “wash down as far as possible, wash up as far as possible; then wash possible.”

    Still, how that expression migrated from Stamps, Arkansas to the Awkesasne Mohawk reservation in northern New York and Canada (where my mother grew up) is still a mystery to me.

  55. I stopped sending christmas cards 3 years ago because it’s annoying…BUTT (see what I did there?) I might have to rethink that.

  57. From Ellen DeGeneres: the little arrow on your fuel indicator thingy? it tells you which side of the car the gas cap is on.

  58. I have never read all the comments on your page with so much interest! I am pretty innocent for the most part. 🙂 That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
    I did teach a coworker about Butterface today. He had never heard the term so I said, “she’d be really good looking…but her face.” So crude. I blame my son!

  59. I once heard of a woman who had thought for years that misled was pronounced mizzled.

  60. When I moved out to the country, I laughed at my husband when he said that he was going turkey hunting, because there’s not much sport in walking up to a pen and shooting. Which was really confusing to him. I had NO idea that turkeys roamed free.

  61. One day it occurred to me that calling the thing in your throat an “adam’s apple” must have something to do with the story of the garden of eden. And I was like, whoa . . . why has no one ever mentioned this to me?

  62. In college, I hadn’t done a lot of texting and it was before most phones had Qwerty keyboards. I was really frustrated at my parents house one day because I was texting and was typing every word out, so it was taking forever. My mom asked me why I wasn’t using the T9 option on my phone. I told her cause it always suggested the wrong words! My mother then told me if I kept hitting the T9, it would eventually find the word I was looking for.

  63. Narwhals are actually real, despite being called ‘the unicorns of the sea’ by many. <– true fact that blew my 35 year old friend's mind.

  64. That song Peaches and Cream by 112 was about oral sex. I figured it out about seven years after singing it at the top of my lungs in front of my parents almost daily when I was 16 and it was still on the radio. Why didn’t they say something?!

  65. Ugh, ugh, ugh, this is so gross I can hardly bear to share it — but then again, I think I’m in the right company. Here goes: If you go to a wine tasting and you see a big container of what looks like liquid, DO NOT rinse your glass in it. It is not rinse water.

    (It is spit.)

  69. My mom always likes to use the word ‘puss’ for face. As in, “You’ve got chocolate all over. Go wash your puss!”. Guessing she’s behind you in learning what a taint is, so at least your not last.

  70. I still don’t know how to ride a public transportation bus. I’ve never been on one and have no idea how the whole system works and I don’t feel like looking like a clueless idiot in order to learn.

  73. Reading one of Jenny’s blog posts enlightened me to what jizz is…before she wrote about it, I had no idea. Actually, even while reading the post, I didn’t know what it meant. Halfway through reading, I had to stop and Google it, so I could understand the post. It was MUCH FUNNIER after I knew what she was referring to 😉

  74. I forgot about the time I asked my grandmother where something was and she said “it’s over yonder”. I had to ask my mom where yonder was. And I was born and raised in the south. SMH

  76. When I was a kid, for years I thought Jimi Hendrix was singing, ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy’.

  77. Something that everyone else knew, but I did not:

    It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring,
    Bumped his head and went to bed,
    And didn’t get up in the morning.

    The old man hit his head, got a concussion, and died. I realized this about a year ago…

  79. I was at least half way through high school before I learned that “several” didn’t mean “seven”. Does that count?

  80. I was a junior in high school when I learned that the expression “to get off on” (something) had a literal meaning other than the figurative one “to enjoy.”
    Unfortunately, I was a seventh-grader when I learned the figurative meaning and I immediately adopted it into my daily vocabulary. I used it thousands of times in every possible context and with all audiences: parents, teachers, peers, and undoubtedly members of the clergy …
    One day I made an offhand remark to my stepbrother that I got off on a particular video and he said, “Not literally? You don’t go up to the tv and [crude hand gesture]…”?
    And that was the first ripple of my Tsunami Of Shame …

  82. Hey, thank you Math Teacher for the explanation on the Greater Than/Less Than carrots! We were just musing about that at dinner the other night. I can’t wait to share my newfound knowledge – I am going to look so smart!! 🙂

  85. The eyes in front predator thing is useful in knowing right away which the most dangerous dinosaurs are in Jurassic Park.

  88. I’ve learned so much today. My aha moment was in church. For years when we read Psalm 23, I always heard it, “The Lord is my Sheppard I shall not want” and I could never figure out why you wouldn’t want the Lord to be your Sheppard. Then when I was 30 I heard the version, The Lord is my Sheppard, I shall not want for anything.” I almost yelled “Aha” at the funeral I was sitting through.

    Also, until today, I thought a tossed salad was what happened when you put all the salad food in a bowl, put the lid on and tossed it to mix it up.

    Somedays I feel like I grew up on my own planet.

  89. The plural of penis is English is penes, in American it is penises.

    Quaint is an old name for the vulva.

    There is a plant called “welcome home husband no matter how late nor drunk you may be” also called the houseleek.

    There are tropical vines called Clitoria amazonica, Clitoria nervosa and Clitoria fragrans. Many of the common names of the genus are vulval.

  90. As a Dane I never knew it was called taint (literally translated the Danish word is “middleflesh”) Now I think the song “tainted love” just got a lot weirder…

  91. We open bananas the wrong way. We should open them at the not stem end. Pinch. Open. Once I learned that bananas were never hard to open again. I felt so lied to.

  92. I was exceptionally sheltered while growing up. Thankfully, one of my first “career” type jobs was with a department of people more than willing to teach me irreverent things. Including but not limited to “tossing your salad”.

  93. Actually, the way I heard taint defined summed it up very clearly (for men, at least): t’ain’t the sack and t’ain’t the crack.

  94. I looked up chode on urban dictionary and got conflicting answers. I still don’t know what it means. I don’t know how birds mate while being smooth down there and I’m afraid to google it, but I have seen a turkey mount a duck, so it must be sexual. I still wonder how “salad tossing” got that name, because salads are green. Ewwww.
    My husband thought our daughter was pregnant because, being very pale, she got visible stretch marks on her legs after a growth spurt. He thought stretch marks were a symptom of pregnancy, like morning sickness or breast milk. I had to hold a hand mirror up to his ass to prove otherwise.

  95. My mother-in-law grew up quite sheltered in a small farming community, but I still can’t figure out how she’s lived this long and raised five boys without realizing that many of her expressions are now euphamisms for penis. For example, when her husband does something stupid or klutzy, he “pulled a boner”. That one was hilarious to hear her say in church. She named one of the chicks she was raising in her elementary class “Mr. Pecker” because chickens peck the ground. We insisted that she change the bird’s name as soon as we found out.

  96. When I was a kid, I always thought the chorus for the song “Dude” was “do the lucky lady”…and I thought it was some kind of dance…..

  97. Taint Taint. Here in Oz that bit of in-between skin is called a ‘Fact’ ’cause if it wasn’t there you would really be in the shit and that’s a Fact

  98. I’m a nurse and a patient told me he had problems in the taint area. I managed to keep from laughing and got out of the exam room and told the doctor what he’d said. My boss is a very smart guy and a great doctor but he had no idea what the taint was, let alone how it got its name. Apparently that wasn’t taught in medical school at THE Ohio State University. This day’s post is priceless!

  99. I once greeted my (male) boss with a cheerful “how’s it hanging?” He looked at me with a really weird expression on his face, and I didn’t know why. I found out later what that phrase actually meant, but at the time I thought it was like the Hawaiian “hang loose” or something like that. When I learned of my mistake, I was belatedly horrified.

  100. LMAO at all of these comments! I remember an epic Christmas Scrabble game with my mother, my brother’s MIL and my SIL. My mom spelled out C-U-N-T. We all about DIED laughing. We laughed so hard, we couldn’t even tell her what it meant. So she called my husband, who promptly said WTF and hung up on her. She’s only recently learned a few new names for vagina & penis, thanks to my lovely, uncouth children…

  101. For the math teacher and number line… Your explanation makes sense, I like it, as an adult. But when I was a kid, I was taught that the arrows are just like open alligator mouths, and the alligator is going to chomp the bigger number, because it wants a big meal. 42 > 3

  102. I’m 38, and I learned Wednesday night as I watched American Horror Story and one of the characters covered Nirvana’s Come As You Are, I learned that the line is “I swear it, I don’t have a gun.” Always thought it was….well, nevermind, you’ll all laugh at me if I say. O:)

    (No, now we need to know. We’ll laugh WITH you. ~ Jenny)

  104. By the way, because of what I said up in #26, my wife and I call the revelatory, mind-blown, should-a-known-that-by-now feeling a “Mairzy Doats Moment.”

  105. Kristen Schaal did a stand up bit called the taintologues. That was the first time I had ever heard of it.

  106. I knew the origin of the word, but I’d rather not think about my taint. It just seems like one other part of my body that I should be taking care of or paying attention to, and I have too many things to do, and too many things to obsess about as it is.

    It’s bound to come back to haunt me. The Tell-Tale Taint.

  107. We moved when I was 9 and I had always gone to Catholic school (read:sheltered), but since it was already Spring Break, I just went to public school to finish out the year. On the bus one day some older kids started picking on me and one of them said “I bet you’re a virgin!” I had no idea what a virgin was, but they made it sound bad, so I yelled back “NO I’M NOT!” It was a couple of years before I really figured that one out.

    My favorite uncle is hilarious, but he often speaks without thinking. One time, a bunch of us were standing in a circle at his son’s graduation from medical school when he rather loudly proclaimed “NOW I KNOW WHAT A CIRCLE JERK IS!” Oh dear…

    He also told my dad and I once that his wife wanted him to dig out her clitoris and move it to the front yard. He meant clematis.

  111. I worked out just this week that the expression “she is the cat’s mother” meaning you should use someone’s name not just say she is an expression because the word for a female cat is a she. I’ve heard the expression my whole life but only just made this connection.

  114. Every World History book in school started one chapter with “The Renaissance was a rebirth of art…”
    After 12 years of primary and secondary schooling, and 3 undergrad, my final year of college I got to go to Europe. And see Art. Like The Birth of Venus, or as the title is written beside the frame in French(?) La Naissance de Venus.

    Oh. Re-Birth. Re-Naissance.

    America might want to work on teaching second languages better…

  116. This isn’t suggestive or related at all to body parts, but – I recently realized that the alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star are the same tune.

  117. The funniest explanation of “taint” is from the show Weeds. Made me laugh and laugh!

  118. “dick fingers” – Someone who is poor at catching objects such as balls in sports or anything being passed or thrown to them. Hence their fingers have the resemblance of a flaccid penis.

  119. So, I had to turn off the wi-fi on my phone so I could google some of these, since our company’s security settings won’t let me go to Urban Dictionary. I’ve led a sheltered life apparently

  120. OMG I’m laughing so hard I spit diet coke on my laptop. Don’t feel to sheltered – I had to have an agent who is about 20 years younger than me explaining “tea bagging” and DP.

  123. Ok. So. This isn’t off-color (which is, I guess, an old fashioned phrase for something that would make you blush) but it is old fashioned. I was probably about 40 before I realized that “beribboned” was not “berry boned.” I thought it had something to do with frilly corsets and was what I thought we would now call stays. Oh well. Quaint (not taint) confusion.

  124. Actually there are two Kansas Cities. Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS. But Kansas City, MO is the larger of the two cities and the one where both the Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs are located.

  125. I feel like everyone’s in on some big secret I don’t know about. I feel old. Taint? Time for me to google. BRB.

  126. FedEx has an arrow in the middle of the word Ex, where the spaces between the letters are. I didn’t ever see it before my husband pointed it out, and I can’t unsee it now.

  127. I pronounced phlegm as fleg-um until I was in college and my best friend laughed hysterically at me. Thus, I tried not to laugh (too much) when my eighth grader said for-reg-nuh to me. me: What’s that word? him: You know, like alien. me: Ah, foreign. him: WHAT?! I thought those were two different words!

  128. I started community college when I was 16, and I had lived a fairly sheltered life prior to that. I found out what a “pearl necklace” is when I told my friends that my boyfriend had given me one for Christmas (he bought me an actual strand of pearls, which I still have and still can’t wear without thinking of my embarrassment in that moment.)

    I just recently learned that Ore-Ida brand French fries is short for Oregon-Idaho, the two largest potato producers in the country.

    Also, I was a teenager before I understood the phrase “Can’t carry a tune in a bucket.” I always pictured someone singing into a bucket and assumed it was related to acoustics or something. Then my grandmother told somebody she couldn’t carry a tune in a basket, and suddenly I felt both enlightened and really dumb.

  129. I didn’t know sex involved penetration until I was almost 13. (I thought it was like Barbie-on-Ken sex. This is truest argument on why all schools should require sex ed.)

  130. If I had had water in my mouth while reading this, I’m sure I would have spewed it all over my monitor! My husband explained taint to me some years ago, but his explanation was much..um.. cruder. I’ve got one — Dickie do, a term for a man’s belly that sticks out further than his dickie do. My husband taught me that one as well. I believe the only word meanings I’ve ever had to explain to him are doily and dickie (as in the article of clothing, but what a weird name for that…).

  131. I had read something about a dental dam a few days before a dental appointment. I mentioned to my husband that I didn’t know what a dental dam was and I was going to ask the dentist. He just about spit out his drink. My dentist is a close friend. I think she actually would have enjoyed the question.

  132. I just read Alanna’s comment and thought of another one — For the longest time, I didn’t realize a long kiss involved tongues. I just thought the two people put their lips together for a long time. Tongues?? Who would’ve thought of THAT??

  133. It hasn’t happened recently, but sometimes when I was younger I would introduce myself and people would be like “Your initials are MJ!” and laugh a little bit. I never understood why that was funny. This year I finally realized that MJ was short for marijuana. Suddenly it made sense.

  134. I thought facetious, a word I had only read, was FACE-tchuss and didn’t connect it to fuh-SEE-shuss, a word I had heard thousands of times (thanks mom!), until I was in my 20s.

    I had to explain to my sister that the wings on a man’s jacket collar are luh-PELS not LAPE-uhls when she was in college.

    And I had a music history teacher (whose Ragtime, Blues and Jazz course was absolutely fantastic) who pronounced subtle as SUB-tul…I didn’t have the heart to correct her but she used it all. the. time.

  135. Things were getting exciting as we neared the end of our family sized Trivial Pursuit tourney. For one of the last pieces of the “pie”, the question was “What was LIttle Miss Muffet eating as she sat on her tuffet?”. My grown aunt jumped up and exclaimed with conviction “She was eating her curbs away!!”. Split second of silence, then uproarious laughter. I love that lady.

  136. And, I just saw Marjie’s post so nevermind! I should’ve known the Bloggessian community will always be there to teach me! Also, just realized how slow I am, hahahaha.

  137. When I was a kid it took me a looooong time to realize that Arkansas was NOT pronounced Ark Kansas, but rather Arkansaw.

  138. My now ex husband was telling me how our toddler nephew had punched him in “the grow-ins” and could not understand why I was on the ground laughing!

  139. I was in my 20s before I realised that Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh was named after the noise donkeys make, or that the bible’s name literally translates to “the book”, or that “o’clock” is just a contraction of “of the clock”.
    Up until a year ago I thought starling was a generic term for any baby bird, I never knew they were a particular breed of bird.
    . . . and I just learnt what a taint is.

  140. We used to get Holsum brand bread, and we had the bread in the house for years and years and one day I said Holsum out loud and realized they just were trying to trick us by making our brains think it is WHOLESOME bread. Duh!!

  142. Thanks to this forum I have discovered the Urban Dictionary. Where have you been all my life?

  143. I didn’t get the double entendre meant by “if I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me” until I was 30. Mind. Blown.

  145. Flapdoodle: It’s in both. Try telling my SIL that there’s no Kansas City in Kansas and you will lose your head quicker than you can blink.

  147. When I was a kid, I had a baby doll with those bottles whose contents seem to disappear when you tilt them. There were two, one milk and one orange juice. Knowing that bottles were a substitute for breastfeeding, I assumed that breasts were the same as those bottles: One makes milk and the other makes orange juice. I was about 8 when I figured out the truth.

  149. Just found out that tossing the salad is licking the taint.
    I’m 42!
    Found out what taint was from Weeds.
    Never knew what turkey slapping was until it made the news here in Oz when someone did it on Big Brother.
    My wife didn’t know what bukake was until I explained it to her, after she’d heard it in a song (FIGJAM, by Butterfingers – look it up).
    I didn’t know what smoking a bat meant until I was about 19, and someone asked if I liked to smoke bats; I thought it was just another name for cigarette.
    I’m still not entirely sure what Kelis’s Milkshake song is about.
    Other names for female genitalia: twat, cooze, snatch, beaver, the pink, pussy, fanny (though in the US it’s your backside; confusing if an Aussie date’s an American and they’re discussing sexual positions etc).
    Didn’t know the word queef until it came up in a Southpark episode, though I’d experienced a girlfriend having a queef during coitus once or twice.
    Other names for male genitals: bedflute, salami, pork sword, purple headed custard chucker, puffer python (when it bites you it takes 9 months for the swelling to go down), turkey baster.
    Other terms for masturbation; shaking hands with the unemployed, knocking one out, having a bat, pulling the pud, wanking,

    Years ago when I lived in Melbourne Victoria, I would frequently drive past a Chinese Restaurant, which had lovely looking Chinese Characters, but an unfortunate name of “Fooking Chinese Restaurant and takeaway”.
    There was also a butcher’s store I sometimes noticed in Melbourne, in a Vietnamese part of town, simply named “Phuc Dat Butcher”.
    There’s a whole heap of stuff like that if you look up Engrish on google, there are stores where you can buy clothing etc with problematic translations etc.

  150. When I was a kid and would complain that I wasn’t the culprit for a mess or other miscellaneous mischief, my mom would reply with “It wasn’t me, it was the one-armed man!” I just put it up to old people being crazy. Then I saw “The Fugitive” and my jaw dropped when I put it together.

    Also, I remember reading ‘Of Mice and Men’ in high school and suddenly thinking “Holy shit! Hug him and squeeze him and call him George!”

  152. Hey, Amanda (#50), you aren’t entirely wrong on blonde/blond. Blonde with an e is the feminine, blond without is the masculine. A blonde woman, or a blond man. You’ll see it both ways, depending on who they’re talking about. This is my useless bit of knowledge for the day. Ta da!

  154. Around the same time I learned “taint’, I also learned “camel toe”.(when a girl’s pants are so tight in the crotch that you can see her vulva (or mulva, lol) clearly outlined–it looks like a camel’s toe.

    I’m still wiping tears. And I learned a few ones, too (tossed salad). OMG, the stretch marks has killed me dead.

  155. I only recently realized that Netflix is called that because it lets you watch flicks on the net. I thought it was just a catchy fake word. I console myself by remembering that my cousin was convinced that the bumps on the road were to let blind people drive. She was so convinced I almost believed her.

  156. My step father would always grab his chest and yell that the stress was causing him to have a canary. I was an adult before I realized that he was claiming he was having a heart attack (coronary) not a small bird. I just thought he was nuts and if Bart Simpson can have a cow, then he could have his canary.

  157. Today on my favorite morning radio program they were talking about The Beatles and one jockey mentions that he was in his 30s before he realized why their name was spelled the way it is. Fortunately, another member of the group was as confused as I was because the guy had to explain it as “Beat”les…like the beat of a drum or song. Mind blown. Your column as usual is timely.

  158. Hello, “The math teacher” here.
    Just wanted to clarify… I was teaching algebra and my students needed to know the name of the symbols. They already knew that the bigger part “eats” the bigger number, but for higher levels of math, and standardized testing, you have to know which symbol is which (no “alligators” in the multiple choice sections, sadly), so, the number line is an easy way to remember which is “less than” and which is “greater than.” Being able to say the expression aloud (like -9<-4 aka negative nine is less than negative four) and see that one number goes to the left or right of the other on the line also makes it easier to get a grasp of the concept, especially for us visual learners!

  159. There’s an old riddle I heard when I was six – “What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck!” And I would laugh at it because it was silly.

    And then I finally GOT that joke when I was twelve. I think I was actually in the middle of a study hall and nearly shouted it out (“oh, wait, four wheels and FLIES! OHHHHHHH!”)

    There’s actually something I STILL don’t know that I happened to have accidentally said and somehow offended my boss terribly. For some reason we were talking about hot stone massage at my office when I was in my 20’s, and I made a reference to “hot rocks”, and he interrupted, shocked, and asked “did you just say ‘hot rocks’?”

    “uh….yes? But….” I could tell I’d accidentally said something bad. “Uh…but I don’t mean anything by that, but…stones that are….warm.”

    My boss just looked uneasy and said “I think we’d better stop having this conversation,” and refused to explain it to me.

    IT HAS BEEN TWENTY YEARS NOW AND I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT I SAID. Someone, help.

  161. Ok, this is the best thread ever.
    Since someone just said camel toe, I recently learned the male version is moose knuckles.
    I didn’t know snafu stood for situation normal, all fucked up.
    I thought sob was a bad word for the longest time because that’s how my mother would “spell out” son of a bitch.
    And till I was about 14 and really thought about it, I thought elephants could fly because of Dumbo.

  162. If you don’t have a ruler, a dollar bill, is approximately 6 inches. This useless knowledge has saved me in furniture stores many a time.

  163. My friend once confessed that she thought the “No Outlet” signs you see under street signs meant that the street had no electricity.

  164. Last year a coworker expressed irritation that a HVAC repairman couldn’t solve our ductwork problem, which resulted in chilly offices all winter. “He says he does HVAC. HEATING. VENTILATION. Air conditioning.” Mind. Blown. I always thought HVAC was just a fancy kind of AC system.

    I’m 35.

  166. When I was 28 and my “baby” brother was 18, he had to explain to me what “skeet” meant. And he didn’t mean the shooting of clay disks. Though he did mean a shooting of some other kind!

  167. At the end of some supper meals, my Dad would say to my Mom … ‘women, I’m fed up”. As a kid it stressed me out. It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that I figured it out.

  168. But the perineum doesn’t need a slang name because the word perineum is so lovely.

  169. Just learned what bukakae is and not to say anything about my “fanny” in Australia. Learning while laughing, priceless.

  170. I was in my 20s before I figured out that Warren Buffet and Jimmy Buffet were two different people.

    Okay, fine, I still have to stop and think about it.

    mumbleandTrumanCapote&AlCaponemumble

  171. Life hack: since Texas has so many roads. If your exit number is on the right of the sign your exit will be on of the right if your exit sign is posted on the left your exit will be on the left.

  173. Also if you guys ever want to return the favor to any guys who have sprung urban slang on you, tell them periods arent just blood. It will blow there minds.

  175. My friends always made me tell this joke because they said my delivery was awesome. ‘What’s worse than sweat on Olivia Newton John?’ ‘Come on Eileen.’ Except that I was in 3rd grade and had no idea there was a double meaning for come. I didn’t realize why the joke was funny until high school.

  176. “Watch where you’re going.”

    Most people use that as an angry admonishment when you run into someone – or nearly.

    One day I was watching my four-year-old nephew running full speed forward while watching a helium balloon trailing behind him. Suddenly I realised how literal that phrase is. Don’t look behind you or to your left or way out in front… watch where your next step is taking you.

  177. I am an epidemiologist and started my career working in STD prevention. As part of the training, we spent a few hours one day learning slang for male and female anatomy, sex, and drugs. They split us up into groups with big pieces of paper on the walls and had us list all the terms we could think of. It was the weirdest thing I have done at work. I was fairly well versed going in and I definitely learned a few things. Like the term “cummunion” (you can probably figure that out) and that “puppy parties” are a thing (think S&M gear and a tail attached to a butt plug- no actual puppies involved). Good luck not dreaming about that tonight.

  178. @SqualorHouseGail
    For men, a “moose knuckle” refers to wearing pants too high, splitting the scrotum and causing an unsightly bulges. “VPL” refers to Visible Penis Line (definition is obvious, but so is John Hamm’s).

  179. It wasn’t until I was 11 that I realized that when I started my period an actual egg the size of a chicken egg wasn’t going to come out. I did not realize that the egg was microscopic.

  180. dude I had t heard of MiLF until a few years ago , my husband nearly died as I’m the potty mouth know it all

  181. @Kamikaze Sasquatch – Sometimes it just takes reading it in a thread like this . . . I never knew that line was a double entendre! OMG I feel stupid. Thank you, that’s hilarious! “If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me,” sheesh, no wonder it’s such a cheesy line.

    @Various – Related to the gas arrow . . . I feel like I found out late in life (as an adult) that cars had reverse lights. (And I still feel like there should be a better name for them.) Clearly, I never took driver’s ed. I thought it was the coolest thing. /nerd

    @Various – I didn’t know what tossing salad meant, either (I had a vague idea it was sexual, as well as salad prep).

    @Ben – I’ve heard of smoking pole, not smoking a bat, but I presume it means the same thing. 😉

  182. Hi Jenny,
    I wanted to thank you openly discussing your issues with depression and all the ways you deal with it. Just reading about your personal experiences makes me remember that it is real, and it’s not just me, and that other people know what it’s like to feel this way. I have tried to get help from several therapists/psychologists in my area and none are taking new patients. It’s so hard to even muster up the courage to ask for help and then to be turned down? Well, it’s more discouraging than I can ever convey. But I’m going to keep trying, and keep asking, and keep living, and your blog reminds me to do so. So, Jenny, keep trying, keep asking, and keep living because I need you to. We all do.

    Oh, and this ^ has nothing to do with your part. Also, your book is fucking hilarious.

    ÷÷Brooke

  183. When it first came out, I thought Prince’s Little Red Corvette was about a car. One of the boys in my class enlightened me.

    When playing Cards Against Humanity with friends on my birthday, I had to explain to one of them what a gloryhole is. Would you believe that I managed to explain it without using any bad language? A side note – it’s difficult to play with kids in the house!

    And Netflix? Mind.Blown.

  184. “English not being my home language, I thought that a vegetarian has never had sex.”

    Fucking hilarious!!! That is one HARDCORE vegan, right there.

    So many things I have yet to learn: only today I learned about taints, tossed salad and butterfaces. I still don’t know what bukake is but now I’m not sure I wanna know.
    And only fairly recently – say, in the past year (I am nearly 40) – I found out what snark is, that SFW does not mean ‘so fucking what’, and I still have no idea what “THAT IS SO META!” means. No one is alone on this. One of my favourites is by a mate… because we call sandwiches “sangers” for short in Australia she figured the proper word must be “sangwich”. She thought that until she was 25.

  185. “I love Kanga and Roo from Winnie the Pooh” Oh…..my……gosh. Kanga…..Roo…..Kangaroo!”

    I feel ashamed that this was all worked out while I was talking with coworkers, in college.

    I didn’t realize the Eeyore thing until I read that comment today. Dammit Winnie the Pooh! What other insanely obvious things have I missed?

    I was in my Fashion History class learning about the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit when I gasped “holy cow – Fauntleroy is Donald Duck’s middle name because of his sailor “Little Lord Fauntleroy” outfit!”. Yup, in college.

    (You’ll start to see a trend here)

    In my Art History class (sigh, yes, in college) we were learning about the Mary Magdalene and the Smoking Flame painting (wait for it) “Hey! Ariel has that painting in her grotto!” I swear I watch movies that are not rated G.

    I also didn’t know what the Peaches and Cream song was about when I asked my parents to buy me 112’s album for Christmas. I find comfort in knowing (hoping) that they had no idea either.

    Lastly, I also thought “FTW” was “fuck the world” not “for the win” until about a year ago, thanks to my sister. So many tweets now make sense.

  187. My brother thought a “Butterface” was a girl with a greasy shiny face. Like she needed to touch up her powder! When i told him it meant “everything about a girl was sexy BUT HER face” there was such a defeated look in his eyes. I was like, “Search your heart, luke. You know it to be true!”

  188. Ok, 71 yr old Great Grandma here…have just spent the past hour reading all the replies and frantically looking up all the words I didnt know the meaning of. Think I better go delete my history now before the Grandkids get curious or my kids see it and think the old girl has finally
    lost her marbles! Best laugh I’ve had in ages 🙂

  189. “The only thihng I can figure is that it’s a testicle reference…but it’s also the title of a Rolling Stone complation album…”

    Yeah, I knew about the Rolling Stones album, and that made it all the more baffling – “why are you acting like that record title is a swear word, boss?…..”

    Although, this wasn’t new for me at the time. One of the more interesting friends my BFF in high school and I had when I was about sixteen where when I came to her one day and confessed that “so, um, I’ve heard that the lyrics to that Peter Gabriel song ‘Sledgehammer’ are really dirty – but I don’t understand why, can you explain?” (And God bless her, she did.)

    And amusingly, the shoe was on the other foot when it was my MOTHER who asked a question like that: my parents and I were watching A MIGHTY WIND a few years ago and Parker Posey had a line about ben wa balls and my father and I chuckled. And then a full two minutes later, my mother innocently asked, “What are ‘ben wa balls’?”

    And there was a very long silence, and I finally said, “Okay – I DO know what they are, but if I tried to explain it to you it would be really embarrassing for us both.”

    And my mother just said “ohhhhhhhhhhh,” and DROPPED THE SUBJECT FOREVER.

  190. I actually still don’t know what “taint” is (besides a stain on something), and I call myself a writer. Here I am reading your comments section instead of working on NaNoWriMo.

    I learned what “camel toe” meant from watching a Nicholas Cage movie.

    I know I was hopelessly naive until well into my 30’s (and beyond), but as I approach late middle age (read: old) I have apparently blocked all that old stupidity I used to not know and am working on new ones to not know.

  191. I prefer the term Grundle for the area between “Scrotumville and Anusburg.” (urban dictionary)

  192. Also, I have a friend who mispread the restaurant name Rodolfo’s as Rotlefas. I’ve personally looked at an on/off dial upside down and asked “Why does that say “NO”?

  193. Reading this thread has been exceedingly educational, and it’s made me laugh until I cried. Which means I am brave enough to admit that until tonight, I thought “tossing the salad” was the same thing as “tossing your cookies.” Which is to say, that they both mean that one was vomiting.

    And now I’m wondering if “tossing your cookies” has another meaning that I’m entirely unaware of.

  194. I was watching a PBS cooking show and the man who was hosting-a Brit- said “look at all these wonderful faggots” I laughed so hard even though I knew he was talking about a dish he was making for the show.
    🙂

  195. Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine, if you insist…..I used to think the line was “when I smell it, I don’t have a gun.” what??? 😉

    “”I’m 38, and I learned Wednesday night as I watched American Horror Story and one of the characters covered Nirvana’s Come As You Are, I learned that the line is “I swear it, I don’t have a gun.” Always thought it was….well, nevermind, you’ll all laugh at me if I say.””
    (No, now we need to know. We’ll laugh WITH you. ~ Jenny)

  196. I’ll never forget the awkward moment when I was visiting my parents a couple years back and my dad looks over and says, “Hey, what’s a MILF?”

    Ohmygod, I am NOT answering this question.

  197. I was watching a PBS cooking show and the man who was hosting-a Brit- was showing off the food he would be making for the show when he said “look at all the wonderful faggots” I burst out laughing even though I knew he was speaking about the food and not male homosexuals.

  198. I took a lot of online classes and had never heard Oedipus pronounced. In my head it was Oh-die-puss until one day when I overheard a couple talking and a woman used it in a sentence. Bonus: She was NOT happy so context was easy to ascertain (ass-her-tayne?)

  199. My family all laughed when I pronounced a certain word for female bits. Apparently it doesn’t rhyme with brontosaurus. I was mebbe 28 at the time?
    Also, I was horrified in my younger years when I found out it was illegal to drink and drive since my parents guzzled pop on every family road trip.

  200. Once upon a time I heard that every time you sneeze it’s 1/10th of an orgasm. I’ve spent my life since then trying to sneeze 10 times in a row REALLY fast (it has to be really fast or it won’t work).

    Haha.

  201. Inspired by the math teachers below. I’ve always had a mental block against my 9 times tables for some reason and still use this to this day, I’m embarrassed to say. Hold up all your fingers. 9 X 4? Hold down your fourth finger. You’re left with 3 fingers on the left side and 6 on the right to make 9 X 4 = 36. Works for all your 9 times tables. You’re welcome.

  203. I will add the “inbetweenus”, which is the area between a man’s penis and anus. Doesn’t work for women, so maybe taint is for girls and inbetweenus is for boys… Ya know, like waiter or waitress, handsome and beautiful, or man-whore and slut.

  204. I thought that “tube steak” was a funny term for hot dogs. As in we aren’t having sirloin steak for dinner because it is so expensive. We’re having tube steaks because hot dogs cost less than steak.
    Now I’m horrified, wondering if I’ve ever talked about eating tube steaks as in hot dogs in front of my father. He was in the Marines so he probably knew what the dirty slang meaning was.
    Oh, I’m so embarrassed.

  205. Hi Jenny,
    I wanted to thank you openly discussing your issues with depression and all the ways you deal with it. Just reading about your personal experiences makes me remember that it is real, and it’s not just me, and that other people know what it’s like to feel this way. I have tried to get help from several therapists/psychologists in my area and none are taking new patients. It’s so hard to even muster up the courage to ask for help and then to be turned down? Well, it’s more discouraging than I can ever convey. But I’m going to keep trying, and keep asking, and keep living, and your blog reminds me to do so. So, Jenny, keep trying, keep asking, and keep living because I need you to. We all do.

    This has nothing to do with this post, and also, your book was fucking hilarious.

    —Brooke

  206. When I was trying to get pregnant (at age 30) one of the guys at work kept on saying I would have a boy if I hung his (my co-worker) pants on the bedpost, and Im like "Pants dont have anything to do with pregnancy!” . It wasn`t until much, much later it finally dawned on me what he meant.

  207. Ever have a bad day, or just feel rough, and you’re looking for sympathy?

    You’ll find it in the dictionary, between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis’

    For the record, growing up, that was my father’s standard reply when I was whiney or bitchy.

  209. I grew up in the New Orleans Area, where we’re below sea level. We don’t typically bury our dead below ground. Until I was in eighth grade and took a trip to Arlington National Cemetery, I thought that burring someone in the ground was something that was only done in horror movies, not something that people did in real life.

  210. Growing up, whenever I was whiney or bitchy, my father would charm me and everyone around us with clever little quips. One that’s stuck with me and has become a part of my regular repertoire:

    You looking for sympathy? It’s in the dictionary between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis.’

    Fun fact? That’s 100% true.

  211. I read a historical fiction book which took place in the late 1800’s in San Francisco where the term ‘below job’ was used in reference to oral sex and I realized that’s where ‘blow job’ comes from! Never really understood why there would be any blowing involved.

    When I was a kid in the 70’s, people used to say “Smooth Move, ExLax!” when you did something klutzy. I finally realized (sometime in my 30’s) that it was referring to a bowel movement because ExLax was a laxative. Duh.

  212. For much of my life I thought that jay walking meant walking around naked in public, as in naked as a jay bird. I still have no idea as to the origin of either .

  214. Hope these aren’t repeats:

    In Australia a “fanny” is a vagina. So be careful not to call it your fanny pack.

    Diagonal cutters are a tool used for cutting wire, and the name is often shortened to “dikes.”

    My father used to refer to something that was poorly made as a “blivet.” His definition of a blivet was “10 pounds of shit in a 5-pound sack.”

  215. Read all the comments, googled Ben Wa Balls and juuust found out what the ‘Musical Bell Balls’ that my brother and I used to play with, which we were pretty certain was a bona fide musical instrument, are actually used for. And the elephant and purring comment blew my mind.

  216. I can’t remember what age I was when I learned that uphill wasn’t pronounced ‘oofill’. So what? I can’t even remember whether that’s true or not.

  217. My birthday is April 20th. Starting in late middle school and all the way into the early years of college whenever someone would find out what day my birthday was they’d nudge me and say all conspiratoraly, “I know what you’re doing to celebrate”! I’d be so confused about why so many people acted all weird about birthday celebrations, and just nervously respond with “probably just have cake and ice cream”. To which they would then laugh and say I was probably going to have a lot of both. Didn’t find out until I was in my mid 20’s that 4-20 was known as the universal day of the year to get high on pot, and finally realized the real meaning behind those strange birthday conversations.

  218. I’m so relieved that I am not the only person who has discussions with co-workers about the taint. Although I was shocked that several were not familiar with the term. If only your PSA cards had been available 3 weeks ago…..

  219. Huh. I thought tossing the salad meant, you know, adding salad dressing.

    I’m a nurse, and during a shift, while in the male patient’s room, and having to look at said patient’s genitalia, I realized that Law & Order: SVU was on. They were explaining what “teabagging” was. Made eye contact with my patient right about then. I think he was more embarrassed than me.

  220. I have a good friend who thought–well into adulthood– that narwhals weren’t real. She thought they were basically unicorns of the sea.

  222. I once fell on my cunth….. This is class, check it out, Gary Tank Commander is well funny.

  223. What the comments on this post have taught me is that slang is very country-specific. Or I’m incredibly sheltered. One or the other.

  224. I spent years while working in an uptight bank quoting Phoebe from Friends and saying I wanted to change my name to Princess Consuela Banana Hammock and had nod idea what it meant! One of my friends finally asked me if I knew what a banana hammock was and I’m all…yeah- it’s one of this things you hang your bananas in on the kitchen counter! And he’s all like…noooooo, that’s not it! I was horrified that I had said it in front of many executives over my tenure of ignorance!

  225. I was in my early twenties when I learned that a rooster was just a male chicken rather than an entirely different species of bird..

  226. It’s called a “blowjob” even tho it’s sucking bc it makes him blow his top like a volcano. Mind blown.

  227. I just learned that LOL means laughing out loud and not lots of love. I kept reading things like “that’s what you’re mama said…lots of love” and thought it was kind of the reverse of the say something nice then mean philosophy, “she’s sweet, but…”

  228. I learned stuff today. : )

    I gave my 15 year old son my ATM card to go to the bank and draw out $100. He came home and remarked that it was really stupid how the machine worked. Why do they only allow you to take out money in $20 increments? Yup, he took out $20, five times to get $100. Paid a service fee that month.

  229. I was in my thirties when I realized that the call letters WLVI were Roman numerals that matched up with the station number, Channel 56.

  230. I just learned that it is “for all intents and purposes.” I always thought it was “for all intensive purposes,” like really intense reasons.

  231. I heard a joke as a child that I didn’t understand until I was about 17. Do you know why Santa and Mrs Claus don’t have any children? Because Santa comes down the chimney.

  232. Someone already explained snafu. Similarly, Fubar is “fucked up beyond all recognition.” It is apparently military slang like snafu is.

  233. OK, here’s mine. For years, I thought “laundered money” meant that the cash was put in the washing machine, washed and dried — to make the money look old and beaten up. Because in the movies, the big giveaway that Certain Money was Stolen from the Bank was that the money looked brand new and was therefore acquired by unlawful means.

  235. This isn’t quite the same thing, but here goes:
    I’m 30. For my entire life, my dad has been fond of the phrase “What a friend we have in cheeses.” He loves cheese, I love cheese. My dad used the expression in conversation recently. I then relayed that conversation to my husband. As the phrase came out of my mouth, AT 30 YEARS OLD, I realized that “cheeses” sounds like “Jesus”. My dad has making a joke that I didn’t even know was a joke, for 30 years. Mind=blown.

  236. I had a boss tell me once that ‘irregardless’ isn’t really real a word. It’s regardless or irrespective. I used to say it all the time.

    I was well into my 30s before I realised ‘albeit’ is pronounced all-be-it not all-bet

    Major interstates in the US with odd numbers run north-south and ones with even numbers run east-west.

    And to add just a touch of smut I was horrified the first time I watched Grease as an adult and realised what the songs we sang as 10 year olds actually meant… Really Danny, do the girls cream for Grease Lighting?

  237. I explained “teabagging” to my teenage daughter in 2009; a few years later, she explained “fromunda stain” to me. We help each other like that in our house.

  238. My hubby and his best friend added a term on a Urban Dictionary in 2005. I didn’t really quite grasp what Urban Dictionary was, I was thinking you have Webster’s, Oxford’s, etc., and was so excited to tell friends my hubby was so smart he invented words and was kind of semi-published. I proudly proclaimed when asked what the word was ,”Locker Pudding!” I never even looked it up- my bad big time! I was so truly proud of him. Then my Dad called me back a few days after I had called to brag and told me, “that boy needs help – but he’s funny, and never tell anyone again that he was responsible for it.” Oops. So, I looked it up and was just floored. Between what it was and how easy it was to add a term (not call your Dad brag worthy OMG your son-in-law is practically published HE CREATES WORDS AND SHIT HE IS SO SMART!) I was embarrassed and ever since my Dad sends all his emails to my hubby addressed as to Mr.Webster or will ask how Webster is?

  239. When I was about 6 years old, I was playing nearby while my parents were discussing a court case my Dad had to testify for; it involved a guy who’d given my Dad’s company a bad cheque. So after hearing them talk about a “rubber cheque” for a few minutes, I piped up with “But Dad, you should have tried to stretch it to make sure it wasn’t rubber!”. Silence, then hysterical laughter while my Mom tried to explain what an NSF cheque meant.

    Also, I was in high school before I realized that a Guerrilla Soldier wasn’t a great ape with a gun.

    Thanks, Looney Tunes!

  240. Did you know the loose skin on your elbow is called your “wenis”? You can act all serious and ask Victor if you would like you to rub some lotion on his wenis…. 🙂

  241. More military slang: BOHICA = bend over, here it comes again
    Two favorite words –
    smegma
    merkin
    I was a weird kid… now a cool Grandpa…

  242. I recently learned that sitcom was short for situational comedy. Also the amazon logo has an arrow from a to z. Because, like, they have everything from a to z. I don’t know if everyone else knew these already, but they blew my mind.

  243. PENIS Fun Facts O’ The Day:
    Only human males and male equids (horses, donkeys, mule & zebras,) have skin-covered penises. All other mammals penises are mucus membrane covered.
    Cats also have barbed penises.
    Ducks’ penises are shaped like a corkscrew.

  244. When I was a kid (in Canada where Hostess cakes were not available) our family name for vagina was “Twinkie”. Imagine my horror when watching a movie at 10 years old where one of the characters talked about wanting to eat a Twinkie. It was MANY years before I found out about the cakes made by Hostess. And I’ve still never eaten one!

  245. V: Jay walking is a pejorative for people too stupid to avoid getting hit by cars. “Jay” meant a stupid person. Shortly after cars became a thing, so did pedestrian deaths. Instead of making drivers accountable, I believe the automotive industry started the term so that it would be on the pedestrian (read, not their product or it’s users) who was to blame.

  247. I was waiting for the dryer to finish its cycle, staring up at my duct work in the ceiling when I realized, DUCT tape! It’s for sealing DUCT WORK. Up until my aha moment, I just thought it was a brand name. I was in my thirties.

  248. I was saddened to realize I didn’t invent the word inbredneck….that’s a scary combination of inbreds or rednecks, found in rural areas. I was all ready to add it into the slang dictionary and there it was. Damn.

  250. Maybe a generational thing, and my people are almost extinct, but camel toe used to mean a girl who’d obviously had a lot of oral sex. The clitoris sticks out past the other parts. Like a real camel’s foot has three toes and the center one sticks out the farthest. You’re welcome.

  251. FUBAR in the military meant “fucked up beyond repair.” These days, with everything made so cheaply, it is still a very handy term.

  252. When I was young I understood sex and penetration but didn’t know about the in and out of it (literally). I thought it went in and kind of swung around in there on it’s own while people stayed relatively still. lol

    Knew a lot of these terms, although was never quite sure about the salad tossing, even here there are different definitions, more research is needed, clearly. Learned a lot from Sex and The City! But have also used urban dictionary for terms like motorboat, dutch rudder, dirty Sanchez, etc. Yep we watch some funny movies here!

    The comments here have almost made me fall off the couch a few times, laughing! So needed that, thanks!

  253. My oldest daughter misunderstood pubic hair for public hair. That worried the hell out of me, I’ll tell you!
    Also, if a girl child looked like her dad, my mother would say, “features like father, fixtures like mother”

  256. For years I though indie music was the music sung by people from India. I would make horribly embarrassing comments like, ” I can’t hear and accent at all.”

  257. When I heard Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer”, I thought there must a large statue of a horse on seventh avenue in New York, and the boxer would sit under it to get out of the weather: “Just a ‘come-on’ from the horse on seventh avenue. I do declare there were times that I was so lonesome I took some comfort there.”

  258. During the summer between high school and college, I worked as a receptionist for a freight brokerage company. The dispatchers would call up trucking companies and ask for “vans or reefers.” I was a bit appalled until someone explained that “reefer” is short for refrigerated truck.

  259. I think I’m about to reveal an appalling level of ignorance, but I trust I won’t be judged. I learned something new about the structure of female genitalia while watching the episode called “Two Holes” on “Orange is the New Black.” I’ve had two holes my entire life and never knew it!

  260. I didn’t know french fries were made out of potatoes until I was in high school. I thought they were some kind of fried dough or something.

  261. I need to take issue with the grammatics of your friends explanation. If the word is truly a shortened version of “it ain’t”, then shouldn’t it technically be spelled ’tain’t? And shouldn’t one be able to just say ’tain’t instead of it tain’t which implies a double it?

  263. I moved to Texas from San Diego a few years ago. My little sister came to visit me, and I took her on a drive outside town to really “show off” my country-ness. As we drove some back road pretty far into I-don’t-know-where, we suddenly came upon a field of the weirdest looking animals either of us had seen. I pulled over and we got out to look. I cleaned my glasses, and looked again. Nope. Still there. Weird animal.

    We got back in the car and started to leave when I saw a farmer coming to the gate leading out of the pasture. I drove up to him and leaned out my window.

    Me: Excuse me! Sir?
    Farmer: Yes’m
    Me: Sir, can you please tell me what kinds of animals are in this field? gestures toward weird things
    F: Them there’s cows.
    Me: … Cows? Oh. Are you sure?
    F: Yee-ahh
    Me: mumbling They don’t look like any cows I’ve ever seen.
    (Please note: all the cows I have ever seen came from the Happy Cows come from California cheese commercials)
    F: Well, them there’s BRAHMA cows.
    Me: as if he was crazy Oooh. I see. Bra men cows. OK. That makes so much sense. Thank you.

    I am not sure who thought who was crazier, but turns out this kind of cow is a big thing here. Huh. Who knew?

  264. I never knew I had a perineum until that SOB obstetrician cut through it when I had my first baby. Yeow, that takes forever to heal!

  265. OK, I’ll play. My husband bought a used car and the tire was making a rhythmic noise as we drove. I kept asking him what the “fapping” noise was, completely unaware what the word meant until he yelled “Stop saying that!”

  266. When I was 23 I found out the lyrics were not “Secret Asian Man”, while singing them out loud during a road trip. The other people in the car were amused, since I’m usually a colossal know-it-all.

  267. And now I can never unsee the urban dictionary’s definition of tossed salad.

  268. My 7th grade music teacher taught us that Porgie and Bess was an opera about fish (Miss Cormier—who deserves to be called out—pronounced it Porgie and Bass).

    My daughter had a high school history teacher who taught that Pearl Harbor is in Rhode Island. (WISH I could remember her name…)

  270. I was newly married… I was told, by a new co-worker of my husband, that prime rib came from the sunny side of the cow… the side of the cow facing the sun, while standing on the sunny side of the hills… (we lived near cattle ranches on low rolling hills) I was still not a believer so I called my father, long distance, to confirm… “Is it true that…” He calmly confirmed… I didn’t find out until 4 years later that I’d been pranked. So, 25 years later, we still call it “Sunny side of the cow”…. I miss my dad. Seriously. He was the best. This conversation gave us both chuckles for a long time.

  272. Okay, when you click the link to buy the card…just read the reviews for the card and it’s hysterical all by itself. Yes, I know the reviews aren’t for that card specifically, but it’s pure comedy gold knowing how it’s…tainted now.

  273. Today my Fox News addicted father kept talking about the TeaBag Party. He had no idea why I kept laughing….

    and only when my daughter was a cheerleader did I realize the cheer is NOT a silly nonsense word cheer: ” Let’s go! Let’s go! allyte estch-u-o” (My children still give me hell about that!)

  276. These comments remind me of the uncomfortable time I told my mom the joke, “what do an elephant & a Seiko watch have in common? They both come in quartz!” & then had to EXPLODE it to her.

  278. When I was a child I heard the following joke a number of times, once on a children’s TV program:
    Q: What is worn under a Scotsman’s kilt?
    A: Nothing! It’s all in perfect working order!

    But I never got it. I couldn’t see the connection between the punchline and the question. Many, many years later, a friend referred to this joke and I had the courage to ask him to explain it to me. He told me that “worn” can also mean “tattered” as in “worn out,” and then it finally clicked for me. I felt like an ancient mystery had been solved!

  279. Waaay back in the middle of the last century, no one learned Eenie Meenie Miney Moe with tigers. I think I was probably 12 or 13 before I found out what The N Word meant.

  280. A few years back I saw a bumper sticker while driving in the car with my 17 year old son. I had NO idea what it meant and asked him if he did. It was a hand, with the ring finger and thumb folded in, the pinkie and pointer/middle fingers extended. He became very embarrassed but after much persistence admitted to me it was the ‘shocker’. I still had no idea and pushed him further. His crude reply of “two in the pink, one in the stink’ was both embarrassing and absolutely hilarious.

  281. There’s no way to tell on myself without using the derogatory term. I apologize. Again, mid-60s, and we were all mad for The Beatles—every little thing about them, right down to their very cool stacked-heel ankle boots, which someone told us were called Spic shoes. I think I made it to high school before that epiphany struck.

  282. I had no idea that C U Next Tusday was an actual swear word until i was 30 years old. I thought it was just a guy word, like when they call each other p*ssies all the time? growing up in texas, i have always been told that “GD” is the worst word there is. I was crushed to learn my carefully cultivated sailor mouth had been rather on the time side all along, so many wasted years 🙁 !!

  287. And I’m pretty sure Google is now worried about me. I grew up in a rather conservative family, so I had to look up most of those terms…including taint.

    Until a few years ago my dad pronounced the word “trough” as “traw” until we laughed at him. He still slips sometimes. Including once while he was giving a sermon (he’s a pastor).

    I think I was maybe 12 when I found out that being a virgin and being barren were not the same thing. My friends at church had to explain it to me. It made the whole Mary being a virgin thing totally different.

    There are many words that I learn by reading and never hear out loud. Usually if I use it for the first time I mumble a bit so that if I’m wrong I don’t make too much of a fool of myself.

  288. Just remembered another one! Not realizing until my mid 20s that Genres was pronounced “jon-rhas” not “jen-errs”.

  289. I have several embarrassing stories I could tell on myself, but my favorite one is: I was watching TV with my 14-year-old daughter. Bevis and Butthead was on and one of the characters, Bevis I think, said he was going home to spank the monkey. I asked her – when did he get a monkey? and why would he spank it? She was mortified that she had to explain that to me. Wah, wah.

  290. That soda brand Sunkist? Sun kissed.

    Dunkin’ Donuts? You dunk donuts in coffee.

    Seriously, I had no idea until I was in college.

  291. Until last week I thought the word adage was pronounced ah-dah-j because I knew it was a Latin/French word and, as everyone knows, every Latin and French word is pronounced NOT phonetically. I’m 29 years old and an English Major. Yeah…Facepalm!

  292. My husband told me that he thought a douche was “One of those scratchy conical things that people hang in the shower.”
    “A loofah?” I asked..
    “yes that! I thought it was used to scrape out gunk or something!”
    “Holy shit! That’s AMAZING!” I said,
    “when did you find out what a douche really is!?
    “when we moved in together.” 0-0

    Also I have to admit that until I was about 17, I was under the impression that testicles were in separate sacs on either side of the penis. I believe this notion was the result of badly drawn graffiti.

  293. J Rose’s tip about the more-than and less-than signs – I had a maths book that told me to think of them as a greedy duck’s beak. To this day I still look at them and think “So, the duck would rather eat the ‘x’ than the 24, so that means x is larger!”

  294. I did not realize until I was an adult that the word “bedraggled” was pronounced be-draggled and not bed-raggled. To be fair, the only time I had ever heard anyone say it was once when my father was reading to me. Apparently, he didn’t know how to pronounce it either.

    Also, my grandmother married a man whose last name was “Kuykendall”. Everyone, and I mean everyone, called him “Kike”. It was on his Christmas stocking for Christ’s sake! Considering that I grew up in a not at all racially diverse area, it was a very long time before I learned that that word had any connotation other than being the name of the man who was my grandma’s second husband.

  295. I gave up and went to urban dictionary. A hot rock is a burning piece falling off the end of a lit joint. So to the commenter above… your old boss may have been a pothead.
    When my husband wakes up, I get to explain teabagging…he told me about a videogame version where one character walks too close to the other so the graphics merge a little and character 1 starts bouncing on character 2, yes it looks sexual but it’s not the whole story.
    in the meantime I have to figure out how to clear the kindle browsing history!

  296. The one I never knew about until recently was that there were little tabs on either end of the aluminum foil box that you could push in to hold the cardboard roll in place while you rolled out the foil.

  297. My niece recently strained some muscles in her upper arm. She picked up some ointment, Mineral Ice, and asked her husband to rub a little on her. He was looking at the tube of ointment and said I really don’t think you got the right stuff. This is an anal gesic it’s for your ass.

  299. Linda Workman – It’s not duct tape though, it’s DUCK tape and was invented to keep thing dry – it’s waterproof – like a duck. It’s NOT meant to be used on ducts.

  301. I recently learned that the little arrow next to the gas pump icon in your car points to which side you fill your tank is on. Totes blew my mind.

  302. When I was in high school, apprx 150 year ago, the wildest thing we ever heard about was somebody spiking the punch at a party. Swear to God.

  303. As a test of rural Southerness, consider the word ‘chunk’. Ask a friend to define ‘chunk’; depending on whether they answer ‘a portion or piece of something’ or ‘to throw’ goes a long way to describe their upbringing… 🙂 YMMV

  304. Recently read a book where the shero used the phrase “Kicking ass and taking names” and another character was confused so she explained you have to take their names so you know what to put on their tombstone. NEVER OCCURRED TO ME!

  305. Alice and Linda Workman – it is actually both duck and duct…according to the Big Ass Book of Duct Tape I bought my brother. It was created for soldiers (duck like waterproof) and when they came home the housing boom saw many ex-soldiers doing construction and the tape they used sucked so they dug out the old military tape and thus a new industry was born (duct)…and now prom dresses and barbecue aprons, cause what else are you gonna do with it. 🙂

  306. I was explaining to my husband that an ex-boyfriend was so dumb, he thought that if a girl had a gap between her thighs, it meant that she had a lot of sex. My husband looks at me and goes “yeah, that’s true.” The look I gave him should have seared right through his skull.

  308. My entire life I wondered how they got the seeds out of seedless grapes without squishing the grape. Then one day at the grocery store I walked past the seedless watermelon. You know those movie scenes where the heavens open up, light beams down, and the angelic host begin singing? Yeah, that was me, right in the middle of the Meijer produce department.

  309. I think we need a whole new topic of “things young guys tell each other about sex.” Remember when a politician came out and said a woman has a way of blocking sperm if she doesn’t want to get pregnant?! One I remember is “you can’t thread a moving needle.” Meaning if the girl doesn’t hold still you can’t have sex with her. I think the human race would not have continued if that one was true.

  310. i learned LAST WEEK that men often do not even unbuckle their belts to pee. i mean, i’m well aware of the purpose of the fly, but it never occurred to me that they would leave the top buttoned and, like… fish around for it. it seems so… inefficient.

    yup, 31 years old and just learning how the other half pees. this is what happens when you only have sisters.

  311. As a kid I liked to read Hints from Heloise (don’t ask me why.). She would occasionally refer to needing to use “a little elbow grease.” I thought this was some sort of cleanser adults knew about.

  312. Also I grew up in New Orleans and when learning to drive I asked my teacher what the 1 and the 2 on the automatic shifter was for. He said that was for people who lived in other parts of the country and “wasn’t for me.” After college I lived in NH for a few years. After about two years I was telling someone how much trouble I had driving in the snow and they asked if I downshift. I said “No, I drive an automatic.” They said “Yes, but that’s the 1 and the 2 by the shifter.” “But I thought that wasn’t…. Oh!”

  313. I also thought the song was “Secret Asian Man.” I wondered why it was a secret well into my 20s. And I just learned narwhals are real. Like within the past few weeks. I thought it was a purely fictional creature created for the movie “Elf.” I’m 34.

    However, a few months ago I had to explain bukake to a handful of colleagues. I was the only female who knew what it meant. So go me?

  314. If we are talking sexual naivety, I was embarassed to learn late in to my 30’s that not all ‘lady parts’ are created equal. My husband informed me that some gals have vulva lips that are so long they can be tied in a knot? Pardon Me? And that they scrunch up in to wrinkly bits that can be pulled and stretched out… I couldn’t F’n believe it, so we went to the ‘internets’ and sure enough he was right. In fact there is surgery for this kind of thing! I proceeded to tell my friends this crazy-ass news that I had been unaware of and many looked at me with a strange look, which I assumed mean they had weird vulva shit going on too! TMI !!!

  315. Puss absolutely was a common term for face—that’s where the term sourpuss comes from. (“Oh, don’t be such an old sourpuss, everyone else wants to see this movie.”)

    My husband referred to having muffed the shot while playing basketball with the kids. They fell down.

    Oh my god, there are so many. How can I stop?

  316. Add to “moose knuckle” – grape smuggler. A less-than-well-endowed guy on the beach wearing a speedo.

  318. I didn’t make the connection the chia seeds that are in those slimy drinks and pouches are the same things that sprout in Chia Pets until a couple of months ago.

  319. Totally just learned what a moose knuckle is. THEN I found out there is a Canadian clothing company called Moose Knuckles, which, as a Canadian, I find both disturbing and awesome.

  320. I just found out on a girls trip this past weekend that when you call some one a pussy, that is actually short for the word pusillanimous meaning lacking courage or cowardly… This whole time I thought it was like calling them a vagina….. Who knew?

  321. I’ve known since I was a child what the lid on the toilet is really for, but a friend had an “ah ha” moment when I recently explained it to her. It’s not so you have somewhere to sit other than on the actual toilet seat. My Mom was insistent hat you put the lid down before flushing because it keeps the bloom of poop water from getting all over your toothbrush. It also solves the problem of men not putting the seat down if everyone closes the lid!

  322. Although it’s embarrassing, the timing is too perfect not to share: In my late 20’s I was a meeting at work the week of Thanksgiving. During a lull in the conversation I announced that I needed to stop on the way home to buy a “concubine” for my centerpiece. I had (obviously) never said the word out loud and thought I was saying “cornucopia”. My coworker just looked across the table at me and said “I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

  323. My way of remembering the left-right arrows is that more people are right handed, so right=more! I “think” I made that up that explanation but it’s always worked for me.

  324. Just the other day (I’m 46) I got the Knock Knock joke about Dwayne the bathtub.

    When I was a kid and my dad was driving in heavy traffic he would say, “Who opened the gates?” For the longest time I literally thought there were gates somewhere at the end of the roads that were letting traffic on the highway.

    The song “Loving Every Minute of it” by Loverboy is about a vibrator.

    I was once driving in the car with my very religious mom when she looked at a bumper sticker on a car in front of us. “What does IF IT SMELLS LIKE FISH, EAT IT mean?” she asked me. I wussed out and said I had no idea.

    I should also admit that there are a few things I didn’t know until reading all the comments here. But I won’t say which ones.

  325. I have a friend who, for 26 years of her life, had uvula (the dangly punching bag at the back of your throat) and vulva (ladyparts) confused with each other… I had to explain it to her, and it took a lot of convincing — she was absolutely convinced I was wrong. I would give a lot to go back in time and listen in on her past conversations!

  326. I was 30 years old with two kids before I realized that Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and the ABC Song were one and the same. My then 4-year-old was the one who brought it my attention. I can haz teh smart?

  327. When I was in my mid-20’s I worked for an architecture firm. We had to create 8-character file names for each project. Well, my new project was the Brownsburg Eye Care Center. I had no idea “brown eye” was even a term. Much laughter was had at my expense.

  329. So, two things:
    1. PDQ – did not realized until recently that this stood for “Pretty Damn Quick.” I always thought it stood for some kind of Latin phrase.
    2. This is not something I learned about, but something that is a personal quest for me (and Jenny, I’m sure you already know this but help me get the word out): the phrase is “you think [fill in the the blank with something preposterous], then you’ve got another THINK coming!” People, it’s not “then you’ve got another THING coming.” That doesn’t even make sense.

  330. My Dad always used the “shit and Syphilis” joke as well. I thought I was the only one hearing that one growing up.
    Had an RN co-worker who would say tr-ow for trough as in “a peak and trough blood level”.
    A nursing school classmate had told me that her son worked at a pizza joint and once asked an older lady calling in her order if she wanted “fromunda cheese” on her pizza. had no clue what it meant.
    My great Aunt once asked my teenage sister what a gigolo was.
    My Mom tried to make a deal with my 8yr old son to get him to behave while we were on vacation. He promised that he would but she wanted to seal the deal so she held out her little pinky to him and said “pinky square?” My son and I lost it, but she had no clue what we were laughing about. Of course, that’s a family classic now.
    Another family classic (again from Mom): She and my Dad gave me a card for my birthday but the gift hadn’t arrived yet so in the card she wrote “We O Y”…her version of “IOU”.
    Also grew up singing “looking for my lost jigger and saw” and thinking well, I know what a saw is but what the heck is a jigger?? Found out later he was looking for his “lost shaker of salt”…that only led to more questions…what does he need the salt for??
    Had quite a few misunderstandings cleared up for me today…Thanks to my fellow Blogessians!

  331. I was in college before I realized the town in Arizona was pronounced too-sahn, not tuck-son.

  332. Some antibiotics make your birth control pills ineffective. I didn’t know that and now I have a daughter! Seriously though, I had probably 20+ ear and sinus infections for which I was prescribed antibiotics between the time I went on the pill at 16 and actually got pregnant at 27 (by which time I was married, stable, employed etc. though not planning to start a family yet) I was really lucky in hindsight. Now I tell everyone just in case someone else doesn’t know.

  333. I have a friend (who’s a teacher….) and she thought all the space shuttle missions went to the moon.

  334. The purring thing is not entirely true – baby raccoons also purr, but as they age the hyoid bone fuses and they lose the ability. Oh, and – only the “small” cats (cheetah and smaller) can purr, and only the “big” cats – lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars – can roar. Purring is caused by a vibration of the hyoid bone, but if the bone is fused to the larynx it gives the ability to roar but loses the ability to vibrate, hence cat species can roar or purr, but not both.

    Also – everyone who thinks a leopard and a cheetah are the same animal, raise your hand.

    Me too until I was in my 20s.

  336. I know many words because I read. However I’ve never heard them spoken. When I used the word “Chutzpah” (correctly) but pronounced it Chutz pawww, my mom almost wrecked the car. She’s still laughing about it, five years later.

  338. As a kid I never knew where Propaganda was, I thought it must be somewhere near Uganda.

  339. These are fabulous. I am learning so much today lol! Here’s a few of my embarrassing moments:
    I remember being in elementary school and telling my mom that I didn’t want to wear dresses anymore because they were too hard to go to the bathroom in. Since I would step into the dress and button it up, I would take the whole thing back down and off to pee. It blew my mind that I could just lift it up. I felt so dumb.
    Or in junior high we had a social studies game where we would answer questions about foreign countries and race to get them all done first. There was always a shortage of encyclopedias (I am old!) so I felt really smart when we did South Africa. Everyone else went for the S books but I got the best A book. I had no idea South Africa was a country and not just generally the southern end of Africa. Got teased a lot that day.
    Oh! And I remember actually getting dizzy and thinking my Matrix was broken when trying to explain the phases of the moon, which I always thought was the earth making a shadow on the moon. Then someone asked what the difference is between the phases and a lunar eclipse and my brain broke. I spent a long time on Google that day.
    And I teach English but I can never give a good explanation about homonyms and homophones and homographs. Doesn’t matter how many times I relearn it, I can’t explain it. Big Fail.
    But I DO know this: the word Emcee is not really a word. It is M.C. which stands for Master of Ceremonies. Knowledge.

  340. Wait, what?? I am obviously going to have to google the phases of the moon
    now? I’m so confused! And I am another one who thought misled was pronounced “mizzled”. Thank God I somehow managed to never have it come up. I think I thought they were two different words.

  341. Someone once asked my then girlfriend about the adhesive on maxi pads. “Doesn’t that hurt when you take them off?”

    I was 8 or so when I did something stupid and my cousin called me a dildo. It sounded like Bilbo, the main character in the Hobbit, so I thought it was hilarious. Started calling everyone and everything a dildo until one of my friends explained to me what it was.

  342. I only just recently realized that Yogi Bear was named after Stan Musial.
    meow meow meow

  343. All throughout my childhood, I wondered how to spell the word my mother used when discussing faeces. ‘Bee-em’, I thought was a possibility, but without the dash, it would have been ‘beeem’ and that didn’t seem right. I was probably 30 by the time I learned it was BM, short for ‘bowel movement’. She never said the words ‘bowel movement’ that whole time. It was a revelation.

  344. I just learned last year, at the age of 38, that shooting stars weren’t actually stars that shoot across space. (I would totally include that ‘more you know’ graphic right here if I knew how)

  345. When I was in 5th grade, I asked one of my teachers, “Can I go to the bathroom?” She said, “I don’t know, CAN you?” I responded, “Um… Yes?” and walked out of the room. I was in my 20s before I realized that she was trying to teach me a grammar lesson.

    A few years ago (I’m 35), I was going on vacation. I told one of my coworkers that he could park in my spot, which is a better spot than his. “I’m in 4-20,” I said, and he laughed and said he thought he could remember that. I had not a clue.

    When my Mom was in her mid to late 30s, she “got” the punchline of the joke “What’s black and white and red all over?”

  347. A group of us drove past the YMCA and one of the guys made a comment about eating at the Y. Another guy said he didn’t know they served food at the YMCA. The rest of us couldn’t stop laughing.

  348. This just reminds of the time my (ex) sister-in-law wore a shirt to a family gathering that said “MILF” I laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants. She’s not a mom either, I asked her if she knew what that meant and she said no. I didn’t have the heart to break it to her. (for those who dont know a MILF is a mom I’d like to fuck

  349. Until I was married, I had no idea that New England was a region and not a state. That whole corner of the country is just a jumbled mess of anachronistic borders representing tiny little states apparently. Somehow I always figured that New England was just one of those states that might as well be New York. Maybe just behind Delaware or something.

  350. It’s “jump off”, not “jump off of”. The “of” is superfluous. Also, it’s “hold the fort”, not “hold down the fort”. (Not unless you’re on a bouncy castle that’s in danger of blowing away!)

  351. I was an intern in LA and I kept hearing my coworker say, “Facial!” when he had done something better than the rest of us. I thought it was just another way of saying, “In your face!” Fast-forward to a few months later when I’m bowling with my best friend and her brothers. After I bowled a strike and I decided to use my coworker’s favorite expression and shouted, “Facial!” I could tell immediately that I’d said something very wrong because both of the guys looked at me incredulously and said, “What did you say?!” I had no idea what it really meant and I was mortified!

  352. When doing your nails: paint the nails on your dominant hand (I’m right-handed, so that’s my right hand) first.
    You’re always more likely to make a mistake and need to use a nail to wipe up a dot of polish when using your non-dominant hand (for me my left) so it makes more sense to do that first while your non-dominant nails are still clean, instead of painting the “natural way” (picking up the polish in your dominant hand and painting your non-dominant nails first) and then having to correct mistakes with freshly painted nails.
    Does that make any sense? I hope so, because when I realised this it CHANGED MY LIFE! Ok, no, it didn’t. But it was a real “lightbulb” moment and I did feel really silly for doing it the other way round and I’ve found it SO much easier to do my nails ever since.

    Also: despite that fact the names all rhyme, Colombia is NOT near to Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, etc in the eat of Europe… It’s in South America! I did not know that!!!

  354. My Dad George taught me the word “blivet; ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag” Also, “mind your p’s and q’s’ refers to the cursive letters, not mind your pleases and thank q’s as I creatively surmised,
    .

  355. Reading this post and then the comments has made my day! I have so many of these cringe-worthy, “That means WHAT!?” moments. My favorite is when I was twelve. I was reading my first Stephen King novel, “It,” (the one with the scary clown shape-shifting monster) while my dad was watching TV. There’s a part in the book where the characters recount their first experiences with It. One of the kids remembers that a leper chased him, asking if the kid wanted a blowjob. I could get the leper part, because the kid’s biggest fear was getting sick, and this part of the book took place in the 50’s. But…a blowjob didn’t seem so scary.The leper was offering the kid to blow his leaves off his driveway with a leafblower, right? I didn’t understand why the kid was so terrified of what I thought was a pretty nice gesture. It was the only conceivable thing I could think it was as a 12-year-old girl. So, confused at this part of the book, I asked my dad, thinking maybe there was something deeply sinister with leafblowers. He looked up from his show, surprised for a second, and then just told me straight up what a blowjob was.

    I stared at my book pretending to read for a few minutes before going to my room, mortified. I was now no longer disturbed by Stephen King, but by the human race and why anyone would ever do that, ever. And why I had to ask my dad, of all people, ever, the particular question. “Dad? What’s a blowjob?”

    We’ve never brought that day up to each other since.

  356. After years of using the word “existential” and actually using it correctly (by accident I guess?), it only occurred to me recently that it meant “having to do with existence”. I think I actually heard the lightbulb go on over my head

  357. Walking In A Winter Wonderland became hilarious when I learned that hubby thought Parson Brown was actually “sparse and brown”. So I made him a brown felt snowman with a sign that says sparse and brown. I can never hear that song without laughing, Thank you for a lovely evening reading the comments!

  358. Whisky Dick/Whiskey Dick. (The first spelling is Scottish, the second is English)
    I should have known this one waaaaaay before age 40. Perhaps leaving the land of men and dating women from age 25 to 40, and only sober women at that, caused a gap in my education. For the still uninitiated: A limp dick caused by too much alcohol. Chance of sex: zero.

  359. I was told the phrase “tossed salad” got it’s name because you cover the anus in ranch dressing to make it taste better. If there’s no ‘dressing’ then it’s just a rim job.

  360. I recently learned that OPP (like from the song “you down wit OPP?” well it means other people’s pussy…..i had no idea.

  361. The dangers of reading to excess without equal social interaction:
    YARMULKE is pronounced “yom muh kuh.” Not “yar myoolk.” Try learning that
    one during a game of Cranium with a heavily Jewish demographic.
    Also, AWRY is not pronounced “aw ree.”

  362. While watching a orchestra on t.v. I saw somebody play an instrument that I was unfamiliar with. Since my husband used to be in a high school marching band, I figured he would know what it was called so I asked him. He glanced at the t.v. and very casually said ‘ oh, that’s a skin flute’.

    Fast forward two weeks. We are hanging out at our favorite bar where we go once a week, busy place where everybody knows each other. Also the place where all the regulars play a music trivia game. Everybody there is very knowledgeable regarding all kinds of music, knows all kinda things about obscure labels. Me not being from the States always felt a little less knowledgeable, but not today, today I would have something to contribute to the conversation my friends! I couldn’t wait to tell everybody about what I thought must be a very rare performance of a skin flute player. Was totally baffled as to why the whole place burst out laughing after I loudly asked ‘hey, did anybody see that guy playing the skin flute on t.v.?’

    Also he(husband) once made me ask the produce manager of the grocery store where the dingleberries were. I had no idea that wasn’t an actual type of berry.

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