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Those deathless words were uttered by Molly on Saturday. My Mom used to say "You're driving me banana!" to which I always replied, "No, Mom, I'm driving you several bananas!"

What well-known phrase did you (or a child or a parent or whatever) used to get wrong?

-- Kymm Zuckert (hedgehog@hedgehog.net), October 17, 2000

Answers

I wrote about this once upon a time. For some reason, I called those blood-sucking creatures of the night 'vanfires', and yes, I always connected them with fires in vans. I couldn't figure out /why/ they were called that, or what they had to do with fires.

-- Lisa (lisa@selkie.net), October 17, 2000.

When I was little, I kept seeing signs saying "Ped Xing", and always wondered what Peds were and how they x'ed.

A couple phrases that grownups get wrong that bother me some:

Panning out. In gold mining terms, this means that there's no more gold dust in the river bed and you have to go prospecting for more and you might starve to death or get shot by rustlers before you find it. Panning out is BAD, people. Not good. Get it right.

Jibing. This is when the back end of the boat... never mind. Jibing is BAD. Things can break when you jibe. People can get knocked overboard. So, saying, "That doesn't jibe" means "that isn't bad". Saying "that jibes with what I found" means "that contradicts what I found." Try saying, "that doesn't JIVE", not "JIBE."

-- Colin (ethilrist@prodigy.net), October 17, 2000.


cocksucker. a boy yelled it at a friend and i once when we were riding our bikes around the next neighborhood over from ours. i yelled back, "what the hell is a cow sucker?!?!?!!" and my friend said, correctively, "cocksucker." it didn't matter. i still didn't know what it was.

-- Erin Lally (shamrockprincess@hotmail.com), October 17, 2000.

Jibing. This is when the back end of the boat... never mind. Jibing is BAD. Things can break when you jibe. People can get knocked overboard. So, saying, "That doesn't jibe" means "that isn't bad". Saying "that jibes with what I found" means "that contradicts what I found." Try saying, "that doesn't JIVE", not "JIBE."

Jibing isn't bad. "To shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack." This isn't a bad thing at all. It's a necessary part of sailing. Just duck your head when the boom swings!

On the same token, in the context of your example, "jibe" doesn't mean "bad." "Jibe" means "agree" or to "be in accord." If you say, "that jibes with what I found," it means "that agrees what I found."

Look it up in dictionary.com. I promise!

-- Sara Astruc (astruc@astruc.com), October 17, 2000.


Oh, and to answer the question-- my mother, whenever we're all fighting or something, will stick her head into the room and angrily snap,

"Cool your bongs!"

We've explained it to her a donzen times...

-- Sara Astruc (astruc@astruc.com), October 17, 2000.



It's not me but my old boss was great at getting phrases wrong and committing other malapropisms. For example,

What's good for the goose is good for the grander. I want it word for word, per batim. And he also had an aunt who was old and losing her mind because she was suffering from "annheiser's disease" which apparently must be caused by drinking too much Budweiser.

-- Bart Tangredi (btangredi@yahoo.com), October 18, 2000.


Panning out just means the gold didn't come out in the pan. It didn't out itself.

-- Phil Zitin (skeck@aeneas.net), October 18, 2000.

Well, nuts. That's what you get for teaching to the lowest common denominator. When you've only a few classes to teach people how to sail before sending them out into the lake, you try to keep things simple. I forgot for a moment the coolness and suavity of Kymm's readers...

-- Colin (ethilrist@prodigy.net), October 18, 2000.

Freshman year at BU one girl on our floor and her boyfriend and another friend of theirs would bid each other farewell with "Our feet are stained" rather than "Auf wedersehn." The drunker they got, the more it'd turn into "We've got muddy feet!"

/Robert

-- Robert (rbdimmick@earthlink.net), October 18, 2000.


My mother, upon hearing about someone's marital infidelity, would say "Well, that person wants to have their cake and cookie, too." No, Mom, they want to have their cake and EAT it too (sheesh).

One phrase I hear said wrongly all the time is "Oh, I could care less about that." The phrase should be: I COULDN'T care less about that. If you could care less, that means that you already care somewhat. If you don't care at all, you couldn't care any less. Why don't people get this?

Kymm, I love this forum question!

-- Jessica (macno@1stconnect.com), October 18, 2000.



Because I'm the kind of person I am, I use that phrase "I could care less," but I always follow it up with "but I'm not sure how."

There's an unfortunate family story, starring me. I was probably about five or so. I'd heard arrivederci somewhere, and knew what it meant, and decided to try it out at my first opportunity.

It came out as "a rubber denchy."

We still say that to one another now.

-- Laura (lbhelfrich@yahoo.com), October 19, 2000.


these are more just mispronunciations than what you mean, buthere they are anyway.... when i was a really young child, apparently for the longest time i said "efendin" instead of "elephant". and my daughter when she was first learning to talk, persistantly said "hangaburger" instead of "hamburger".

-- nicole (nicolemrw@go.com), October 20, 2000.

These sorts of things drive me particularly batty...

irregardless -- did we happen to mention the double-negative?

noo-kyoo-lar -- it's noo-clee-ar...please, try hard on this one, k?

There are others, but those two make me particularly irritable.

I had a friend in highschool who could not say apocalypse to save his life. A-poppa-lips was all he'd ever say.

And strange story...my wife, when she was a little girl, would not call a pickle a pickle. There's an audio tape somewhere of her being asked to say words.."say ketchup...ketchup...say mustard...mustard...say pickle...googlie-goo..."

Nobody in her family knows where googlie-goo came from.

And, to be honest, I bet she didn't say "mustard"...her grandfather got her started calling it "mouse-tard"

Jas

-- Jas (jpacker@us.ibm.com), October 26, 2000.


I worked for a woman who said someone was treating her with "condensation".

Another, a Russian immigrant, said something had "bummed her down".

Another former co-worker said her sister was "bolivious".

-- Joy (jrothke@earthlink.net), October 27, 2000.


When I was a kid, I always used to wonder why cars continued to drive past the "Do Not Pass" signs we encountered.

-- anaugh st. phillip (blurredphoto@hotmail.com), October 28, 2000.


When reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in class, I always said "for Richard's Stands," instead of (and to the republic) "for which it stands"

-- Conor McGee (c_lafayette_m@yahoo.com), May 26, 2002.

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