PART 2.
After I published yesterday’s post I was inundated with even more gold and I can’t not share some of the best ones here.
Amen.
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I fucking love these people & not just because they support my wine-slushee habit:
I’m pregnant and having all the fun mental side effects that go with that, and a few months into it I informed my husband that we were out of the “tiny treasure chests with the gold that come from chickens’ butts.”
Yeah, I definitely forgot the word for eggs.
Box without lock, key or hinge, yet inside golden treasure is hid.
EGGS, INDEED!
Anyway, keep sharing that gold, sistah!
At a local talent show with some friends, and friends of my friends, because someone they all know is performing a song. During the woman’s song, one of the friend of my friends in the row right in front me me turns to us and announces “She’s using way too much fellatio.”
After the show, this person says, “I meant she used too much vibrator.”
At least the second was closer to the word she wanted, vibrato. The singer had a very strong (sometimes referred to as goat-bleat) vibrato when she sang.
Who can forget the line in a classic Jimi Hendrix song: ” ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy” ?
When my little sister was about eleven, she was in a play. The invitation she wrote said she was playing an “oclapus”. In my family, all octopi are now oclapuses. It has been fifty years.
I do love me some Food Accessories and some Panda Chicken, Hahahaha. It’s good for us to get creative with language occasionally, why have only one word to describe something?! And to Meredith above… congratulations! But unfortunately your memory is gone for life now, lol.
It just keeps getting more hilarious! I still remember when my son was little, he pronounced TR like F eg. he referred to himself as Fistan. One day we were out shopping and he yelled at the top of his lungs, “Mommy, look at that big fuck!!”
This makes me feel sooo much better about myself. I keep forgetting words to the point that I’m wondering if I have Dementia, lol.
The other day my husband and I were moving furniture on the porch and I got a splinter. I said “Ow! Thimble!” My husband is like, “What???” So I’m holding my finger yelling “Thimble! Not thimble! Wood! Thimble! Arrrggghhhhh!”
Anyone know the Wham song, ‘Young Guns’? There is a line in it that goes, “death by matrimony”. For years my friend thought it was “death my petrol bombing”. I screamed laughing when I head her signing it. And her miffed face when she found out the real lyrics! It still makes me laugh.
my 3 year old daughter consistently called our SUV and SOB…as in are we taking the SOB out today….
Elton John’s Benny and the Jets: for years growing up I thought he was saying “She’s got electric boobs, a mohawk, too”. I like my version better.
A few years ago, I had valley fever and told my boyfriend that the radiology technician had taken slices of my lungs. You know, the black and white slices…on the CD? Scans, I meant scans.
I have a friend who always refers to Crab Rangoon as Crab Raccoons. I’m pretty sure she does know the difference and just does it to be funny, but now she’s got me doing it, and it makes it very hard to order Chinese food.
My niece, about 5 at the time, couldn’t open the sliding glass door and told us it was “budged.” That’s the family name for stuck stuff now.
Kroger gets the walk of shame, for TWELVE damn years some goober in the sending out of weekly promotion signs declared that the meat department sold “pork lions” rather than pork LOINS. I pointed this out on a very regular basis and corporate (who sent out the signs) never got their act together.
My daughter could not wrap her lips around the words Parmesan cheese or spaghetti. They are forever shakey cheese (which makes sense since it was in a can) and faghetti. 😉
These are the best!!! And here’s my addition…my daughter, spent the spring semester of her junior year in college in Russia. From there, she went to Greece. When we picked her up at the airport, she was like a stroke victim who’d forgotten everyday words. Hence, she referred to the arms of the chair as the “sleeves.” Close, honey. So close.
Oh! Also, our young nephew had a stuffed flamingo, which he called a falingalo.
I had to read about the use of “Toin Coss” about 3 times before I realized there was anything unusual about it. I thought it looked fine!
We had a mascot-naming contest in high school for our new reptilian mascot. I was trying to come up with a suitable name for her, and made the mistake of mentioning it to my older brother who was in college. He suggested a last name that I thought sounded just wonderful. I came out on stage, walked up to the microphone, and in front of the entire school proudly announced my submission: “Tina the LOTLIZARD.” Crickets. Tons and tons of crickets. And a meeting with the Principal. I still cringe 20 years later. 🙁
When I was a kid, I was bewildered that there was snot in the Lord’s prayer – “Lead us snot into temptation.”
I was a California boy, newly married to a Georgia girl. She took me “back home” to meet the folks. There I encountered a southern delicacy new to me. We were at a roadside fruit-and-vegetables stand and the seller asked me “Wouldja lak some balled penis?” – I declined.
(It was boiled peanuts.)
“Yul Brenner died because he smoked like a horse” -me in college. I wish I could say I was intoxicated at the time – but that’s highly doubtful.
Also – thought “mama-say-mama-sa-mama-coosa” in both Michael Jackson’s song, and Rhianna’s was “Ima say my name on the microphone”. Makes perfect sense.
@thebloggess. Thank you for this. I’ve been having such a crappy week and this made my snort my lunch out of my nose.
Two in military settings:
1. My father was in the Air Force when my brothers and I were little. Once my mother was in the commissary and my 2-year-old blond blue-eyed little brother looked around, saw a man’s leg in uniform trousers, yelled, “Daddy!” and hugged the leg of the very African-American airman in line ahead of us. He just laughed.
2. I was in a school when I was a lieutenant in the Marines and one of the instructors, a woman who was a captain, taught classes on the fiscal system, a pretty tedious subject. She could never figure out why she got applause at the end of her presentations – she always finished by putting her hands together palm to palm at about groin level with her fingers pointed down and her thumbs pointed up and saying, “And that’s about the size of it.”
One Christmas my daddy was trying to find my daughter’s favorite movie to no avail. As he asked the clerk in yet another store if they had the movie “Hunting Elmo” the clerk looked at him for a minute and said “Do you mean “Finding Nemo”? Of course we always refer to the movie as “Hunting Elmo” now and always will!
One day my co-worker was very frustrated and instead of saying she was at the end of her rope she said … I’m at the top of my wire! Hilarious.
This is awesome. And now I want to follow ALL THE PEOPLE. To add to the conversation … I introduced a friend to calamari once and I nearly spit out my wine when she said, “I like these testicles!” (She meant to say tentacles.)
Helping my niece (11) and nephew (8) decorate their new rooms, I asked them about their ideal rooms. Niece got all dreamy and said “I really, really want one of those sofas for one person!” Oh honey, we call that a “chair”. Nephew got very excited and sketched his in the air with his hands: “I want, like, a flat table! With drawers where I can put stuff! Can we invent something like that?” Oh, sweet boy, someone beat you to the invention of the “desk.
When I was a teen I asked my mom to buy me the sheet music for Tommy by The Who. She asked the guy at the store for the music to Tommy Who.
at work, lunchtime, and forgot the word for microwave. i gestured at it and called it the “hot fridge.” because, yaknow, you put your food in and it gets hot, right? my coworker still calls it the hot fridge, two years later…. never living that one down 🤪
I have 2. When my little sister was 2 or 3 she was looking through a wildlife book my grandma brought her and suddenly yelled “Look Grandma! Beavers and Cunts!!! Beavers and Cunts!!” After a moment of shock, I managed to look at the book. Apparently she couldn’t say “skunk” yet.
The second was my own misfortunate wording. I work in an animal ER and when triaging, it’s not uncommon to announce to the Vets what you just triaged like “I have a Hit By Car” “I have a limping dog”, etc. I came back after triaging a dog with GI upset and said “I have diarrhea!”
When my son was three we went to a restaurant we’d been too before and he told the waitress he wanted lobster popcorn and those dog balls. He wanted popcorn shrimp and hush puppies.
About the same age, I took him to see Santa in the mall. He loved Toy Story. He told Santa he already had a little Woody so now he wanted a big woody. The woman dressed as an elf said don’t we all?
My English stepmother would always say she had freezerburn instead of brain freeze. It was funny with the accent.
John Cougar – “Jack and Diane”– “Oh yea, life goes on, long after this period of living in scum.”
I didn’t make it past the vagina flap comment before water came spewing out of my nose.
Small younger daughter, back when both daughters were dinosaur-obsessed, called Parasaurolophus “Honkasaurus”. Which makes sense, if you know your dinosaurs.
After becoming pregnant, my mind has been a fun playground for words. I constantly mix up ‘mirror’ and ‘window,’ and the other day, while my husband was mowing the lawn, I told my mom on the phone that he was “vacuuming the yard.”
When I was a teenager (I’m female) I babysat a little boy who said C/K as T. We watched Totaro together (his favorite part is the cat bus). When his mom comes to pick him up, he runs up super excited and said “She showed me the tittie bus mommy! The Tittie Bus!”
I don’t do the Twitter, so I’m going to add a few more here from my mom’s malapropism-riddled co-worker:
Flea bargain (as in, her husband had been arrested, but he was going to ‘flea-bargain’)
Round-ball figure (I need a cost estimate on that, so give me a ’round-ball figure’)
I’m so upset, I’m going to drink myself to Bolivia. (This is one of our favorites and we use it quite often.)
I don’t know how, honestly, but when my son was learning to talk his “frog” turned into “fuck”. Never could figure that one out.
Not sure how it happened, honestly, but when my son was learning to talk his “frog” turned into “fuck”. Never did figure out how.
I was in the drive thru for breakfast one time and was trying to think of the word for tater tots but told them to add an order of potato excrements. I got my tots though… soooo… This was probably 10+ years ago and I still remember saying it and laughing so hard… and still laughing now.
While visiting my daughter, my sister were shopping for dinner stuff at a supermarket, and we thought we should pick up something for dessert. I couldn’t think of the word ‘bakery’ so I said ‘I wonder where we would find the department of cakes’. I also said it with a vague Irish lilt. We aren’t Irish. We’re Canadian.
So glad I had finished my lunch before I read this! Can’t stop snorting.
When helping to put away laundry, my daughter couldn’t remember “linen closet” and referred to it as the “blanket pantry” and we still call it that several years later!
I’ll never forget referring to a flashlight as a “battery-operated torch” when I couldn’t remember what it was actually called.
i have NEVER been able to live down the time I was at a coffee shop and asked if they could make me a hot chocolate, but with espresso in it (you know….a mocha).
When my daughter was 3 or 4, we were visiting my SIL who had a brown sheep (named Brownie). My daughter insisted on calling the sheep Fartigo. I couldn’t figure out where she had come up with that name. A few days later, we were watching the (thankfully short-lived, excessively horrible) Disney Channel cartoon called Special Agent Oso…who had a brown horse…named Fargo.
My little sister does NOT swear. Ever. So when she turned to my mom and told her that her students’ work was half-assed, we were both shocked and asked her to repeat herself. She said, “Half-fast. You know. You do something half-fast?” She was horrified when we told her what the phrase actually was.
My favorite, though, was when I worked in a bookstore and a man came in asking me for “non-fiction books about vampires.” Thinking maybe he meant myths and legends, I took him to that section and showed him the Encyclopedia of Vampires, and other similar books. He looked them over and then (very seriously) informed me that he was looking for more information because he had read his “first non-fiction book, ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'”. I stared at him. So he continued talking about how he hadn’t known any of that had happened, and ended with an incredulous, “It’s amazing to think he could still be out there today, right!?” To which I had to respond, “Well, we’ll never know…”
When I was about 7 years old, my father told a joke that I didn’t understand. He said “Mr. Completely!” I asked where he lived because I didn’t know anyone with that name.
Last week my 7 year old told me she’d rescued her friend’s shoe from where one of the boys at school had thrown it right up against ‘the fence made of bricks.’
I think we call that a wall.
When meeting with a new employee at work about schedules I combined the words full and part time and told them that we may be able to offer a “fart time schedule” with supervisor approval
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to the bank to check my cash.
Me: so what should we name the cat?
Grandma (from the kitchen): pork chops in the oven.
Grandma: did you say what’s for supper or what are we going to name the cat?
The cat was forever called Porkchop.
My mom couldn’t think of the word for “motor home” so she called it a “Homobile”.
Daughter couldn’t remember the name for the Lazy Susan that I keep my spices on. She called it the Sleeping Barbara. Yep, that’s what we still call it.
You know that 80s song “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight”? My father sang that song to me all the time growing up (not too great in the lullaby department, that guy; I also learned “Brick House” and “Play That Funky Music, White Boy” at a young age), but Dad never mentioned to me that he changed a few words. I learned the song as “Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight; It must have been something I ate…” I sang this to my college roommate when she had a stomach ache and was finally corrected. I definitely spent 15 years thinking that it was a song about food poisoning.
I was working in a bookstore. Lady comes in and asks for “The Campbell Soup Book.” All good except I heard “The Kama Sutra.” Thank goodness she had a good sense of humor when I brought the book to her.
We used to shop for bread at the Flowers Bakery shop because it was cheaper, and nearly at its sell-by date. My ex always referred to it as “the used bread store” – and that’s what it shall be called forever.
I can’t stop laughing!! I have a mild form of aphasia, that causes me to forget the names of people and things. I do this stuff all the time, and now I actually feel better about it.
@McSnugz, why were you reading Wuthering Heights at 10??
One night when I was in college, I was waiting outside my friend’s dorm and someone walked up to the door to go in. She looked at me carefully and said, “Do you live in the storm?” Well, that seemed like a really weird thing to say, so I inelegantly replayed, “What?” And she repeated herself. Well, I was in the middle of a really turbulent time in my life, lots of running into the night, fevered journaling and sobbing. It struck me as so extremely poetic to call that the storm, but I didn’t know how she could know that I was experiencing that. I went on to write two separate poems using that idea, before realizing, much later that she was simply asking if I lived in this dorm.
My best friend’s son has digestive issues and once in a sharing circle in pre-school he said he didn’t like it “when mommy puts party toys in my bum”. Social services was called in and it took about ten minutes for my friend and her husband to realize he meant “suppositories”.
I once couldn’t remember the word sweeping while at work, called it “brooming.” Same job, my Iraqi co-worker said “cow oil” instead of butter. Both are apparently still common phrases there.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/these-embarrassing-stories-of-people-using-the-wrong-word?utm_term=.hvwgjJ77oR#.gpZrx8vvJe YOU MADE IT!! 🙂
“In and around the lake. Marlins come out of the sky and they stand there. “ My husband still makes fun of me.
As they were driving down an interstate, a friend’s toddler son pointed excitedly out of the back car window at some construction equipment and exclaimed, “Dumb fuck! Dumb fuck!” To this day, we refer to incredibly stupid people as “dump trucks”.
Once while I was helping my mom with some stuff in the kitchen, I ran across an egg separator but couldn’t remember the word “separator” so I called it an “egg sifter”. I couldn’t stop laughing when I realized what I’d said. It will forever be an “egg sifter” to me.
While I was reading this very post, my 3-yo son came up to me and said, “I have a boob!” I asked him if he was sure: “Yes, I have a boob on my big toe!” He meant boo-boo.
Responding to “I got two chickens to paralyze” my husband added “I’m gonna wring their necks and break their thighs!” We are in Oklahoma and do BBQ competitions so it was a totally natural transition. Please notify the original contributor of the addition to her “sing along” entry above.
Omg! So many others just like me!
I recently corrected my husband: The words are ‘Smoke on the Water’ not ‘Slow Running Water’, And the words are ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’ not ‘Dirty Jeans and Dungarees’. [insert mic drop here]
My mother had never had fajitas before, and at the end of the meal she told me she really liked the Fry-eatas
after my mom died, my father married a lovely woman when he was in his sixties. her wedding gown was “strapless”, but he kept telling me and his grandchildren that her dress was “topless”.
growing up my great grandma always called her wire whisk a ‘boing-boing’ & even asked where to find one at a local store once, troubling the young salesperson there i am sure..
Pretty funny but I’m loosing words and sometimes it not funny, it’s frustrating at work especially and a bit scary.
As usual, I’m reminded that I have found my people here. With all my fibro fog plus now just getting old, I’m constantly having to come up with new names for common items. 😛
Oh my word…. I needed some of these honest laughs with the state my life is in right now. I have many of these stories but the first to come to mind was trying to describe someone to a coworker and all I could get out after much stuttering was “choke beans” – his horrified expression started me to motion frantically to my face trying to get my point across = the answer was cheek bones. Stupid lupus messes up your brain!
My husband has a lot of these: “Pee like a banshee”, “meaner than dirt”, “sweating like a pig in church”, too many to remember.
My four-year-old asked her father if his hair-cheeks itched, and that’s when we realized we hadn’t taught her the word beard.
Last week I forgot the word for spoon and asked the same kid for “that eating stick with the roundy bit”
I once tried to page the custodian to “reception at your convenience” but ended up blaring, “James, please come to conception” over the loudspeakers at a nursing home.
When I was a kid (full confession: up until my early twenties), I thought Petulance was one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I never understood why the CDC wasn’t rounding up and quarantining petulant children.
Dad asked mom if he was listening to Junkyard Dogs new music. Umm, the band is Courtyard Hounds.
In middle school we were writing about what our parents did for a living: I said my mom was a home wrecker, not home maker. Good times.
I first moved to the DMV area in 2002, at the same time as the infamous DC shootings were taking place (my mom called me almost daily.) One of the restaurant servers, a nice Ethiopian girl whose English was usually really good, got very uncomfortable when someone asked what the Fish of the Day might be. “I think it’s…Sniper?”
my husband’s work wife was talking about cold medicine one day, and keep stressing that she “needed the D” – “unless i get the D, it does nothing for me” – “I kept telling the pharmacist, no, I need your D, give me the D”
it took her a solid 3 minutes to figure out why the entire group was cracking up
My favourite ever was my Dad’s name for the movie “Indecent Proposal”. He called it “Unreasonable Offer’. Lol!
And one more – when my husband (at the time husband to be) first met my aunt, he was very nervous. He was smoking in the garden and wanted to ask her where he could put the cigarette butt and instead asked her “do you have anywhere I could put my buttocks”.
I used to think Dido’s “White Flag” lyrics were: I will go down with this ship, and I will poke my eyes out in surrender.” I was horrified.
Just this morning I couldn’t remember the word for suppositories, so I told my husband the doctor had proscribed me “butt pills.”
He understood. We are clearly soulmates.
My son when he was 5 –
D, with his head in the freezer: “Mom! I can’t find my testicle!”
Me: “Well I don’t think it’s in there.”
D: “Nevermind, I found it”, he said, walking away with his popsicle.
I was shopping at the WalMart. Looking through a rack of undies, I called out to my husband, who was around the corner from me, “Oh, look, there’s Pooh on these panties!” I really did not understand his response, “That’s disgusting!” The two salesgirls started laughing. Took a few minutes for our confusion to be corrected.
For the longest time I thought ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was ‘Tequila Mockingbird’. Which I thought was the strangest book to need to read in high school.
I also have a tumich (half tummy, half stomach). I panicked when trying to say I had a sore tummy and created my own word.
During a biology lab, I couldn’t remember the word ‘quadruple’ so I said ‘superdoubled.’ Took a while to live that one down.
I recently called my mom and told her that gas was up to $2.99 a pound. We also use the phrase “Not the sharpest cookie in the fountain” for stupid people. In fact, my family has so many weird sayings that when my mom had a stroke we were verrrrry closely questioned by the doctors who were worried she had damage to her speech center. No that’s just the way we all talk!
My husband asked me in all seriousness why Huey Lewis thinks the Heart of Rock’n’Roll is Topeka. Yeah, huh, Kansas is a happening Place.
I got the words right on this one, but somehow…no. My husband and I went on an overseas vacation, and the day after we got home he had to go on a business trip. I was horribly jet-lagged and went to bed about 5pm. Around 10pm, he called to say he’d arrived safely. The phone woke me up from a dead sleep and the bedroom was pitch black. I lay there holding the receiver, starting to freak out because I couldn’t understand why he was calling me when we were together on vacation. I whispered, “Where ARE you?” “Um…honey…I’m in New York.” “Well then…where am I?”
Many years ago, my mom was listening to Elton John sing Your Song. She turned to me and asked, “Why does he sing, ‘I wonder politely why you’re in the world.’”
I learned two alternate names for KFC from kids I used to babysit (a lifetime ago…).
The kids who had a shoe salesman father always called it Chicken Sandals.
The youngest child in the other family was trying to convince her mother that she deserved to eat her dessert one afternoon because she’d already eaten dinner. When her mom asked what she ate, she said she had Fucky Fried Chicken.
When my kids were growing up, we referred to it by either name. Or we just combined the two. Who wants Fucky Fried Chicken Sandals?
When my son was about 4 years old, we had a dog that was half Cocker Spaniel and half Spitz. He had beautiful long wavy white fur and big dark eyes. People always wanted to know what type of dog he was. My son would proudly pipe up, “Nicky is half a Cocker Spaniel and half a Bitch!” My mother-in-law was not amused.
Well, this isn’t just using the wrong word – and it’s probably politically incorrect – but my husband, my then 2-yr-old son, and a couple of friends of ours were having dinner at Steak & Ale. They have a large salad bar and you serve yourself. My son was several steps ahead of me at the salad bar and when I got back to the area our table was in, I found my son standing in front of a booth – pointing, laughing and saying, “look mommy – munchkins.” I was horrified and trying to hold back hysterical laughter at the same time. I bent down close to his ear and said, “if you say anything else, I’m going to beat the shit out of you (still trying not to laugh out loud) when he says, “mommy’s going to beat the shit out of me – while he laughed maniacally. Embarrassing Moment. One of Many.
My friend, who always wears Crocs, noticed our new boss was wearing Crocs. Her comment- I’m a huge cock fiend, too!
Sheepishly, I will admit that I thought “Mareseatoatsanddoeseatoatsandlittlelambseativy…” was just a nonsense song well into my 30s.
Used to refer to butt-dialing as a “booty call”
They already made a buzzfeed about this: https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/these-embarrassing-stories-of-people-using-the-wrong-word?utm_term=.gfdwQkQKN#.af2oJ7J3q
@Shiela B – OMG! That’s NOT the lyric? Seriously? I still think it makes more sense, after Googling…
SO funny…I’ve been reading a few at a time to extend the fun.
My first concert was seeing Three Dog Night. My mom asked “Who are you seeing…One Dead Dog?” 😁 And I have a friend who thought the “wind chill factor” was the “windshield factor.” 😊
My sister via text: What’s that Beatles song where they keep telling someone to buy crack?
Me replying: I’m pretty sure the Beatles didn’t perform a song about crack cocaine.
My sister: Yeah they did. They keep screaming at this guy JoJo to “buy crack”!
Me: …Get Back?
My sister: No! BUY CRACK.
Me: Look, I don’t know what the hell you’re listening to, but the song “Get Back” is by the Beatles and they’re telling JoJo to GET BACK, not BUY CRACK. And it had to do with immigration, not crack rock.
My sister: …I’ll text Dad.
Really, please, never stop. So funny!
When I was in 10th grade, my biology teacher asked me what I could see in the microscope. I said microscopic orgasms…. ( meant organisms).
Hi Jenny, I just finished your book Furiously Happy, and let me tell you, I could NOT stop laughing the entire time! I do not personally have any mental health issues (maybe I do but that’s another story) but I am a grown adult child of a mother who has them, un-diagnosed of course because one, shes of Hispanic decent (like there are no crazy Mexican-American’s out there) and because she is “old school” and she doesn’t talk about those things. ANYWAY, I once heard my mom keep asking me for the “Flying raisin killer” which she kept saying, and I kept trying to understand (with frustration) but then my dad walked into the dinning room and casually said “It’s the stupid fly swatter, just give it to her”. Your newest Big Fan!
I hope you see this Jennie, I think it’s funny. My daughter in the back seat of the truck, I’m shotgun…”and don’t forget to grab that banana wrapper and throw it out!” Yeah, I meant peel. She’s 11. I will never live that one down!
Also said more than once, shows how much appenion you tay.
I was having a tough day and my very proper friend from Dublin, told me to “Keep my pecker up”. I couldn’t talk because I was cry laughing , but finally explained to her that over here, peckers were something else entirely, and we keep our chins up in the US. She was mortified!
Last week, I asked my husband to check the “salt machine” before he left on a trip. He said, “I sure will.” Thank goodness he knows me so well. (In other words, I asked him to check the salt level in the water softener.)
My friend took his very young son to a Thomas the Tank Engine live show. The son’s favorite engine was Percy, but he couldn’t pronounce “r” yet. In a lull in the show, he piped up, “PUSSY! I LOVE PUSSY!”