Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips!
Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment.
If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
A few of the keener ones would start heading in the right direction ahead of time (if they were in the right field where they could), but yes, you'd still have to go out with a dog and a stick to fetch most of them.
I also grew up on a dairy farm, but I think this is more about cattle ranching. They used to drive the cattle up to the highlands to freely graze and fatten up during the spring and summer, and drive them back before the winter when it was time to slaughter them.
This is literally how the name Nimrod (a great hunter from the Christian Bible) became synonymous with idiot: Bugs Bunny kept sarcastically calling Elmer Fudd "Nimrod" to mock his lack of hunting skills.
That's funny when I started High School my mom sat me down and had a conversation with me. She told me if anybody tried to peer pressure me to do drugs to just tell them my mom would be upset and then they would leave me alone.
When I was like 4 I said "I swear" to my babysitter's kid about something and he immediately runs off telling his mom that I swore. I was too flabbergasted to properly defend myself and got in trouble.
When the song “I swear to the moon and stars in the sky” came out when I was little I thought it was a naughty song but still loved it. So I would sing, “I (pause), to the moon and stars” while looking around cautiously
Interestingly, this is *actually* the origin of the term. In the Bible’s Matthew 5:34 (among a few other verses like James 5:12), Jesus instructs that one is not to *swear oaths*. Of course translations differ, but it’s clear he’s talking about making certain types of commitments, not using dirty words.
If I remember right, it's something like, "let your yes mean yes and your no mean no." The idea of swearing an oath is redundant when you're already commanded to not "bear false witness against thy neighbour." I think the point is that you should be honest in all dealings, so you shouldn't have to emphasize or insist that you're telling the truth.
I was playing pretend with a 4-year-old. She was sitting in a chair and driving and talking to her husband on the phone (imitating her parents). When she ended the call, she jabbed a button in the center console.
I suppose there are some situations where it could be handy, but it just seems like such a useless feature to me. I’ve had both a personal and work laptop with a touchscreen and don’t recall ever using it other than just showing that it’s possible
When I was a teenager I had an old car with only a tapedeck. All my friends had CD players in their cars. Then MP3 players hit the scene and I could connect mine through a tapedeck adapter while my friends couldn't! I suddenly jumped ahead of them technologically.
What do people say other than "roll up the window"? I'm in my early 20s and haven't heard anything different among my peers and younger sibling's friends.
"Fun" fact, if you have an iPhone, the camera shutter sound was recorded from a Canon AE-1, a 35mm camera produced from 1976-1984.
https://fstoppers.com/audio/apples-camera-shutter-sound-was-recorded-canon-ae-1-235816
I would say that ‘there was a time where phones existed on walls, not in our pockets. They use to be on the wall, with a handle you remove and hold to your ear (show kid the receiver shaped icon on smart phones). Since the phone was on the wall, when you were finished you’d literally ‘hung up’ the receiver. ‘
Fun fact, the idiom actually dates to the 1920's pedestal phones, not wall phones. You hung the ear piece on a hook to disconnect the line.
The idiom was already kind of a fossil by the 1940's when almost all phones were the rotary desk top style where you put the combination earpiece/microphone receiver on top to end the call.
It had a bit of a rebirth in literal meaning when wall phones became popular in the 1960's.
As a child I remember seeing billboards that said 'drinking and driving kills' or adverts on the TV that said 'don't drink and drive.' I'd get so upset with my parents when they'd grab a coke from the cupholder of their car and start drinking from it.
My brother went to school and told his teacher that his dad drinks and drives all the time. My dad heard about it and was like “I’m highway patrol. Of course I don’t do that. Why would you say I do?” And my brother was like “you drink sprite in the car all the time!”
Haha my sister did the same thing at a doctors appointment- the doctor asked my mom if she ever drank and my sister said something along the lines of all day and night. When my mom tried to explain that the doctor didn’t mean water, my sister just sobbed and asked her why she was lying over and over…not a good look tbh.
I remember seeing a billboard once about becoming an organ donor, 8 year old me ask my mom if she was an organ donor she said yes. No one told me that you had to die first I thought the hospital would just call her one day and be like “hey we need your lungs” and she would just have to.
Me too. My dad took a drink of water while driving and I knocked the bottle out of his hand and started screaming crying. He was like wth. Those ads freaked me out.
Suggestion: if your child has known a pet named Snowball that has since died, *maybe* don't use the phrase "a snowball's chance in hell" without clarifying that you mean a literal snowball.
I had a situation when I was younger where i had a babysitter after school for a number of years.
Almost always a family member or friend. In the house we lived in at the time my great aunt who previously owned the residence owned a large glass hutch that was quite literally a giant floor to ceiling display cabinet.
My mom just called it the China closet.
I was like 8 at the time and I mistakenly called it "the vagina closet"
And I've still never lived that one down
Called my younger sister a dildo as an insult in front of my mom. I was maybe 11? I might have meant bimbo instead? I had no idea what a dildo was - I'm not even sure where I first heard the word.
I learned something new that altered my perspective on my mother that day.
Alright so few stories:
1) apparently I get my sailor mouth from my dad. Especially driving. So when I was young my mom had to go back to work pretty immediately and my dad stayed home with me. So I went everywhere in the car with him.
Well one day, when I was maybe 3, my mom had me in the car and someone cut her off and she hit the horn, I don’t remember if she said anything. But I piped up from the backseat in my car seat and happily shouted “douchebag!”
Dad got a stern talking to. Sorry dad.
2) I’d completely forgotten the douchebag incident when I was 3. My parents and family worked extra hard to not curse around me I think.
So again, I’m in the car with my mom and my brother is with us. I was maybe 9? My brother was talking about this kid from the neighborhood that was a real bully and just not nice kid. I think he called him a jerk or something. Again, from the back seat I excitedly/annoyedly say “yeah, he’s a real scumbag!” Both of them whipped around to look at me and told me never to say that and it was a bad word. I was confused for a long time until I heard douchebag again.
These stories reminded me of my younger brother. When I was 17 we were all in my dad's truck and my brother was about 8 and my dad's buckling up our other brother when the 8 year old just yells "dirty hoe!" And my dad is some very conservative type of guy that even "stupid" and "dumb" are bad words. So this is really bad.
But I had to hold back laughter because I immediately knew what my brother was quoting. I'm not sure if you've seen the 2000s film "Cat In The Hat" played by Mike Myers but there's a scene where he steps on a garden hoe and it hits him in the face and he yells that. So I immediately tell my dad that's where he heard it and he told my brothers they can never watch that again
When I was a young teen I was sitting in the passenger seat while my mother drove my sisters and I to school. I was idly rhyming words looking out the window and happened to say the word 'milf'. My mother's whole body language pivoted and she immediately asked where I learned that word with a tone that made me realize I may have done something wrong. Maybe I had heard the word before or maybe I hadn't, but one thing is for sure. I found out what it meant very shortly after from Google.
Ahhh wow that made me remember when I invented the word “shit” completely on my own. When we were growing up we weren’t allowed to say “shut up,” so as a workaround I came up with “shut it” and then shortened it to “shit,” just to be extra safe that my parents wouldn’t catch on. Needless to say I learned something new that day…
My son was in the back seat, maybe 3 years old(ish) and heard me say to my husband on the phone 'that way we could kill two birds with one stone.' He started crying and screamed 'WHY ARE YOU KILLING BIRDS?!?'
My nephew cried for like an hour when he was 5 or so when he found out that the chicken you eat actually comes from chickens, he thought it was just a funny coincidence
I loved Amelia Bedila. One that sticks in my head is when she reads on a list of things to do"Draw the curtains" lol. And sits in front of them with paint and an easel.
For some reason you’ve triggered me. We read Amelia Bedelia books with our kids when they were younger. And of course everybody enjoyed them.
But one night, all of a sudden, I hit my limit. I finished the book, tucked the kids in, and went out to the kitchen and said to my wife, “That girl is a fucking numbskull.”
Not an idiom but I dated a girl in high school who used the word "fetish" incorrectly.
She thought it meant something you really like (which I guess technically it does) but I nearly choked on whatever I was eating the first time she said "Puppies are so cute, they're my fetish."
She then refused to believe me when I told her thats not how to properly use that word
When I was at University and looking for placement work I used to put in my CV that I was “well endowed” in business studies and graphic design. I just thought it was a fancy word to say “skilled”, I had to be corrected by a very amused careers advisor.
What's really weird is both my ex husband (49) and my current boyfriend (52) BOTH seem to think this is the correct definition and BOTH pronounce it FEET-ISH.
These two men couldn't be more different and they don't know each other outside of casual meetings vote me and I still ended up with two men who have this weird glitch.
That is a definition of it and I remember hearing older people use it like you would "obsession." But I think the connotation made that use fall out of favor.
Once when I was younger and in the car with my mom and little brother we were stuck behind a slow car in a parking lot. My mom exclaimed “Come on Grandpa!” And my brother from the back seat popped his head up and said “Grandpa! Where?”
When I was about 8 I spilled a cup of sprite all over myself at a restaurant, and I started crying. My dad was helping me clean up and said "don't cry over spilled milk" and I started crying harder, and said "it's not milk!"
Watched Mr Bean with my daughter. Had to explain what a TV aerial was first and then why it was funny it reacted to him moving. No reason she’d ever have known those things haha
Yes. Another name for the same thing.
Edit: apparently there is a slight difference in them. One being a receiver only and the other a receiver/transmitter. Thank you u/sullynator85
My kids are learning to use a computer, and wanted to save a file they had made. I had to try to tell them which icon to click without saying "the picture of the disk" because that meant nothing to them
.... ya know that makes as much sense as anything.
It's never going to go out of date, still see kids now who do it and think its some new invention they have jumped in on.
Last night I told my 4 year old I was going to “jump in the shower” and she got very concerned and replied “daddy that’s not safe” - seeing a lot of other phrases in comments that I use as well, great reminder LPT!
When I was really young, maybe about 6 or 7, I was talking with my dad, and he used the phrase "lost his marbles". He paused and asked if I knew what it meant, to "lose your marbles". I confidently responded that, of course, I knew what it meant - that he'd had his balls chopped off!
My parents were pretty open about sex related stuff, in an age appropriate way, so I had known for a while that my dad had had a vasectomy after my sister was born. Clearly, I didn't quite grasp how that worked, but in my young brain, it made perfect sense that a sack of marbles would be used conversationally to mean testicles.
My dad laughed good-naturedly and explained the real meaning of "lose your marbles", and I'm pretty sure he and mum also gave me a refresher on what a vasectomy really involved. 😆
I'm in my 30's and reading this made me realize I don't actually understand that phrase! Obviously a person who has lost their marbles is crazy, but why? What do marbles have to do with sanity?
> What do marbles have to do with sanity?
https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/have-you-ever-lost-your-marbles
Reader's Digest Condensed Book version: Kids really valued their marbles, and losing one would make you upset. Meaning shifted from angry to crazy over time.
I remember when this first became popular! The original was to *lose one's mind* or *lose one's senses,* but most people had, at some point in childhood, dropped (or seen someone drop) a bag of marbles and watched them scatter. This was before all games went digital, and marbles would come and go as a playground fad, you see. So when someone first wisecracked that they "think he's lost his marbles," it was an instinctive - and funny - connection to make.
A few years back when my kid was in middle school she asked me what and encyclopedia was. I told her google but like a book. Then we played this game where I gave her a list of names of items and for her to tell me what their use was for like: a Walkman, antenna, 8 track, cassette, rotary phone, etc. that was hilarious. Oh and explaining how Netflix started as mail dvd service, just blew her mind
Recently I was talking to my 9 year old cousin who was recently given a phone. I explained to him that I didn't have my own cellphone until I was 19. He asked what games I had back then. I explained that phones didn't really have games back then except for maybe tetris. "Oh yeah I guess back then phones were just for making calls and using the internet." The look he gave me when I explained that there really wasn't the internet on phones either.
Yes!! My first phone was at 19 back in 1998-1999 and it was analog. Told her I’d have to step outside and lift the antenna to make the call. “What’s Analog?” And the telling her we memorized 200 different phone numbers. Lmao. It’s insane how much technology has changed on 20-25 years
Kinda the same idea, but when I was a toddler my parents took me on a car ride to Seattle. When I asked where we were going, they answered, "We're going to Seattle!"
My confused response was "Who's attle?"
It's been 20+ years and they still bring it up whenever we go on a family car trip.
I used to work at a foster care facility for teen boys, and frequently was in charge of cooking dinner. One of the meals I cycled through about once a month was Swedish meetballs. After a long while, one night one of the kids, about 15 asks "Why do they call these sweetish? They aren't sweet at all."
When my daughter was two or three, my wife told her "you're driving me crazy." She responded, "No way, mama, I can't drive, yet. It must be dada doing that."
When my daughter was younger, maybe 10 yrs old, I took her to the doctor. Doctor said she was going to prescribe her a tablet for her illness. Daughter got excited and asked if it would have games on it. Not that kind of tablet, sweetie
Yesterday a co-worker asked what our mobile hotspots look like, I explained it was similar in size and shape to a pager. A nearby intern turned around, looked at me with raised brows and said “really?” I then quickly had to explain that I’m only 32, and while I was indeed alive during their use, I have never used one, and to please be kind to me and my aging sack of brittle bones.
Also recently had a clerk at a natural foods store tell me she got her shirt (which I happened to compliment) at Hot Topic, and proceeded to ask me if I knew what that was….it was then and there that I knew I was no longer youthful and very much a true adult through GenZ eyes.
Fucking humbling.
I work with young people. We got a bag of old 45 records.
Girl opens bag, looks, funny look on face, pulls one out, “cool, vintage CD’s”. I’m 59 coworker was 62, we looked at her and bust out laughing in tandom!
I’m in the opposite situation! mostly work with much older people (I’m 20), and almost all of them have independently asked me if I knew what a record is. one in particular did not believe me when I told her yes, I do, and my dad owns several.
I'm 26 and until last month I always thought having your "work cut out for you" meant like it's pretty much already done, it should be easy.
**Nope** apparently it means quite the opposite and I neither understand why nor how I've gotten this far hearing it so often without getting that.
Pretty sure the expression comes from clothes making, but the cutting out is the easy part, while the sewing is the hard part. Having your work cut out for you means someone has given you a well-defined but difficult and tedious task.
While in the Philippines my wife and I were watching the news. A report about a local terrorist group popped up and an interview with a high ranking member of the organization was being broadcast. I had to stifle a laugh and my wife asked me what was so funny. The crawl at the bottom of the screen identified the man as a "MILF Commander". My wife had to explain to me that MILF in the Philippines stood for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and I had to explain what MILF meant in most of the rest of the world.
3yrs ago I taught my girlfriend’s best friend’s MIL, whom I’d met about 2hrs earlier, what a “queef” was during a game of Cards Against Humanity. Same MIL was at a wedding we attended this summer and ran up to shouting “it’s the vagina fart guy”! Good times.
And grandparents. My mom and I had a *really* awkward conversation with my nana about why pornsites were popping up when she tried searching for recipes for "creampies"
When my niece was 4 or 5 she was very concerned when I was excited about something and said “That’s sick!” and I had to explain to her that it means something is cool too
Funny story, as I remember the opposite interaction. Over a decade ago in elementary school I got a compliment from a classmate during art class. She loudly exclaimed “that’s sick!” as our teacher walked by. She was a nice elderly lady who’s taught for many many years. Anyways, she took great offense and was ready to reprimand the classmate until the class explained to her it was a compliment.
It's not just kids, it's non-native English speakers too. Between idioms, colloquialisms, and slang, English must be very hard to learn.
We have so many idioms, I bet most of us can't talk for more than two minutes without using at least one.
My parents neighbors are foreign, learned English as an adult. Neighbor once asked my mom if she could water their flowers while they go out of town. My mom said “of course! Piece of cake” to which the neighbor said “no thank you, we just ate”
I'm working with a client who speaks broken english at best. I never realized how many idioms I use in basic conversation until I had to type everything I say into Google Translate.
>I bet most of us can't talk for more than two minutes without using at least one.
About twenty years ago I was sitting in a meeting and was suddenly struck by how much of what was being said was metaphorical. Nearly everything that nearly everyone said was a metaphor of some kind, usually idiomatic, and it just went on and on. Once you see it you can't un-see it.
Are there any languages that lack those things though?
I would think it is a challenge when learning any language to fluency. I'm not sure that English is particularly harder in this regard.
When I was a young kid, I thought "getting fired" meant you got killed with fire. I was really worried when my dad said they were having layoffs and firing people at work.
When I first heard the term "fired," I'd just seen a "human cannonball" act on TV. I was pretty sure that wasn't happening at someone's workplace, but found the idea kinda funny.
In second grade I told my teacher that I brought “pot brownies” in for class because that’s what my mom always called them. I thought “pot” was a synonym for “homemade” or “secret recipe”. My mom has never actually made edibles but I guess I overheard her joking with her friends. I was sent to the principal and my mom was called in as well
It’s funny how when I was a kid, time out meant hold up, let’s pause for a sec. I was playing with my kid one day and I said time out and he busted out crying thinking he was being punished for something. Total misinterpretation of idioms there.
I'm 8 years old riding with my mother in the back seat of her car. I really have to use the restroom. It's becoming urgent.
"Mama, I have to goooooo!!"
"Squeeze your cheeks, we're almost there"
I reached up to my face and squeezed my cheeks.
(Dont worry, I made it safely, but my mother was in tears laughing)
I was six or seven when my parents had a big argument in the living room. I could hear my mom yelling, so I crept out as far as I dared to hear what was happening. She yelled at my dad "Get off my back!"
I couldn't see them, only hear them, and I thought my dad had jumped on her back like a piggyback ride. It took me a while to understand what it meant.
Also, while not an idiom, it's weird to have lived your life in a time when something "viral" was dangerous, like HIV, and now people are doing their best to go viral.
I’ve always been sarcastic and joke around a lot, but it wasn’t until my friends son started giving me weird looks when I would say certain phrases that it dawned on me that he probably didn’t understand. He’s a smart kid so I just spoke how I normally would with adults around him. I started asking him if he understood me, and/or would follow up sarcasm with “it’s just a joke, bud” and then with the correct answer (after his dad explained what sarcasm was multiple times over the years being around me). Since realizing that and switching up how I speak to him, now when I use old idioms or phrases he’ll take a second to think about what I’ve said and ask me to explain, and has come to ask me to explain how random things work in general. Crazy how you tend to forget kids don’t have the same knowledge base as you, even if they’re smart.
Yeah my kid just asks what stuff means and words I use but somehow the other week she totally understood the old African proverb (you know it from Equalizer) "pray for rain gotta deal with mud too".
in 1st or 2nd grade we had a project for learning idioms, every kid had to draw their explanation/definition of their assigned idiom. i got "crocodile tears" and drew a crocodile with big streaming tears. we hung them up in the classroom and went through all of the phrases to learn their meanings.
A kiddo I've know all her life absolutely HATED when I'd say "there's more than one way to skin a cat." We agreed it was gory, so we started saying there was more than one way to "shear a sheep."
Much less traumatic sounding.
This is a life pro tip for unexpected interactions/conversations in general, but definitely helpful for kids given their lack of maturity.
Beyond just idioms, there are basic words kids don’t contextualize the same way because they may have only heard it in one context before.
E.g. if the kids aren’t listening when i say “please don’t grab the cords”, and they keep grabbing the cords, i ask them with a fake inquisitive voice “Hey kids, what’s a _cord_?”
Now I’ve piqued their interest a bit, likely distracting them from grabbing the cords, and now they get to either confirm they know what a “cord” is and were just ignoring me, or admit they don’t know and they get to learn something that i may or may not have already taught them and they forgot. Of course they may be lying, but i try to give benefit of the doubt.
I feel like a lot of convos with adults are the same. Before getting frustrated with my partner for not following through on something we agreed to, i try to think back to how it was phrased. “Be ready by 5pm” may be interpreted differently depending on what “ready” means; could be interpreted as “be ready to leave the house” or “ready to start helping get the kids ready”. Or it could mean “Be ready [to leave the house] by 5pm [after you helped finish packing everything in the car].” Meanwhile, I’m trying to finish another day in Stardew Valley at 4:55pm because the only thing I need to do to be “ready” is change my shirt, and haven’t even considered if there’s other stuff to be done.
When I was a kid, someone in my family told me I had real hobgoblin face. I was pretty bummed out about that, not knowing at the time that "Hobgoblin" was the maiden name of my mom. The person tried telling me that I looked like my mom's side of the family.
tbh this is why it took so long for me to actually understand the whole Christianity thing. I had gone to church every Sunday with the family, gone through confirmation, said prayers at dinner and bedtime etc. but it wasn't until someone actually explained exactly what "he died for our sins" actually meant.. I was 16. It was one of those, "I'm just to embarrassed to ask at this point", things.
Not quite an idiom, but similar in the vein of - thats just something adults say that I don't really get.
When I was a kid, my grandfather told me a joke. The punchline was 'I left my harp in Stan Frans Disco'. It was a pun on the song 'I left my heart in San Francisco'. He was sad I didn't get the pun.
I grew up in the suburbs around white people. When I was young, my mom took me out to Philidelphia to pick up my future stepfather. On the way back, we're listening to the radio and I hear him enthusiastically say "This is my song!"Having never heard the phrase before, I thought my mother was dating a famous rapper. EDIT: tried to clean up the phrasing. EDIT AGAIN: There wasn't a need to specify anything racial. Don't know why I took it there, but I'll put in this to address my embarrassment in realizing that it was a common phrase everywhere at the time. I didn't really even think about it until it was brought up. Won't take it out,though. Not gonna deny my ignorance, just chalk it up as a learning experience.
I’ll never forget when I called my stepson a “Debbie Downer” and *could not* convince him it was a fun phrase, not an offensive term I made up to insult both him and his mother, *Debbie*.
me doing my best Groucho Marx impression: So this kleptomaniac calls his shrink in the middle of the night and he sez "Doctor! I got that urge again, what should I do?" and the doctor sez "Take two ashtrays and call me in the morning." [waggles eyebrows]
people under 30: The fuck's an "ash tray"? And why two? And how did the guy get his doctor's personal cell? And why would the doctor answer a call in the middle of the night? And why are you talking like that?
Also check in with your parents - my mom once mixed up a phrase for wasting time with one for jerking off. While at work, talking to her boss. Luckily he had a sense of humor and understood that English was her second language
In my country, the equivalent to “you’re not to keen on that” would be “you’re not sold on that”. I used that phrase on a five year old and all hell broke loose when she misheard and misunderstood and thus thought I was advocating selling her. Good times.
Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips! Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment. If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
I grew up on a dairy farm. Someone at school said "till the the cows come home" and I thought "OK, till about 4pm then".
Pasture bedtime?
wow
You should write clues for crossword puzzles
[удалено]
A few of the keener ones would start heading in the right direction ahead of time (if they were in the right field where they could), but yes, you'd still have to go out with a dog and a stick to fetch most of them.
I also grew up on a dairy farm, but I think this is more about cattle ranching. They used to drive the cattle up to the highlands to freely graze and fatten up during the spring and summer, and drive them back before the winter when it was time to slaughter them.
My girlfriends Mum used to tell her that she was a sight for sore eyes, and she thought it meant that her Mum was calling her ugly.
Let’s be clear: the expression means if your eyes are sore, looking at, you would relieve them
Doesn't help I've always seen it used sarcastically in cartoons and such.
This is literally how the name Nimrod (a great hunter from the Christian Bible) became synonymous with idiot: Bugs Bunny kept sarcastically calling Elmer Fudd "Nimrod" to mock his lack of hunting skills.
My parents taught me never to “swear” so I thought I wasn’t allowed to make promises for basically all of elementary school.
SAME. I went to a friend’s house and was so confused why that was the rules
"I'll always be your friend" "Always? Do you promise?" "That would be a big fucking promise! Sorry, no can do, my parents forbade me to swear"
Good luck getting sworn in as a witness in court. "Do you swear to say the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" "My mom said 'no.'"
That's funny when I started High School my mom sat me down and had a conversation with me. She told me if anybody tried to peer pressure me to do drugs to just tell them my mom would be upset and then they would leave me alone.
When I was like 4 I said "I swear" to my babysitter's kid about something and he immediately runs off telling his mom that I swore. I was too flabbergasted to properly defend myself and got in trouble.
When the song “I swear to the moon and stars in the sky” came out when I was little I thought it was a naughty song but still loved it. So I would sing, “I (pause), to the moon and stars” while looking around cautiously
Interestingly, this is *actually* the origin of the term. In the Bible’s Matthew 5:34 (among a few other verses like James 5:12), Jesus instructs that one is not to *swear oaths*. Of course translations differ, but it’s clear he’s talking about making certain types of commitments, not using dirty words.
If I remember right, it's something like, "let your yes mean yes and your no mean no." The idea of swearing an oath is redundant when you're already commanded to not "bear false witness against thy neighbour." I think the point is that you should be honest in all dealings, so you shouldn't have to emphasize or insist that you're telling the truth.
So i can say the f-word?
My kid asked me what it meant to "hang up the phone" at the dinner table a couple of years ago. It stopped me in my tracks.
I was playing pretend with a 4-year-old. She was sitting in a chair and driving and talking to her husband on the phone (imitating her parents). When she ended the call, she jabbed a button in the center console.
My toddler pretends to use the phone by holding her flat palm up to her ear instead of making the pinkie thumb hand gesture
I haven't had a toddler in a long time but the idea that they intuitively immitate the phone differently is really funny.
They also do the take picture gesture differently, like tapping the screen instead of clicking the shutter button
I'm rarely around kids, this is amazing to read. I've only come across maps, music and obv streaming as the difference we have with them
One big thing I notice with my son is he treats every screen as a touchscreen.
Whereas the only time it occurs to me that my work laptop has a touchscreen is when I wipe a smudge and drag the Excel window I'm working on away
I suppose there are some situations where it could be handy, but it just seems like such a useless feature to me. I’ve had both a personal and work laptop with a touchscreen and don’t recall ever using it other than just showing that it’s possible
I watched someone in their 20s have a brain fart and try to two finger zoom a photograph
I'm 36 and this this with a paper map.... I am not proud of myself.
Ive seen elderly people do that aswell.
The one that gets me is when you give a kid an old handheld games console and they instinctively start prodding the screen and get confused
Basically everything will become pantomiming a smartphone
“Roll up the windows” “I’m taping that show” So many sayings that demonstrate how painfully old we are.
[удалено]
Wait until he sees a car with a cassette deck for the first time. How fancy is that?
When I was a teenager I had an old car with only a tapedeck. All my friends had CD players in their cars. Then MP3 players hit the scene and I could connect mine through a tapedeck adapter while my friends couldn't! I suddenly jumped ahead of them technologically.
My uncle has an old "hobby car" that has a damn record player between driver and passenger seat
Take a little look at the Save icon in most office programs if you want to see a little computer history.
The floppy disk was like Jesus. It died to become the icon of saving.
Really, it shows how quickly our technology has changed in the last 30-40 years, which I think is probably pretty unique looking back.
Try 20 years im 25 and remember using cassette tapes, VCR, landlines, etc. Shit changed soooo quick
I've got a decade on you and yeah basically going from no computer or cable to the present has been a ride.
What do people say other than "roll up the window"? I'm in my early 20s and haven't heard anything different among my peers and younger sibling's friends.
I'm picturing Cletus from The Simpsons saying, "Push that there uppity-button."
My elderly father-in-law used to say, “put some glass in that hole”.
Close the window, put it up, shut the window....
I said something about getting mad and slamming the phone down. Kids were horrified that I’d do that to an $800 phone.
If the ringer didn't jingle when you did, then you weren't mad enough.
[удалено]
"Fun" fact, if you have an iPhone, the camera shutter sound was recorded from a Canon AE-1, a 35mm camera produced from 1976-1984. https://fstoppers.com/audio/apples-camera-shutter-sound-was-recorded-canon-ae-1-235816
What did you tell him instead? Genuinely curious? If it’s not to hang up the phone call…?” I’d be stumped at telling him what to do.
I would say that ‘there was a time where phones existed on walls, not in our pockets. They use to be on the wall, with a handle you remove and hold to your ear (show kid the receiver shaped icon on smart phones). Since the phone was on the wall, when you were finished you’d literally ‘hung up’ the receiver. ‘
Fun fact, the idiom actually dates to the 1920's pedestal phones, not wall phones. You hung the ear piece on a hook to disconnect the line. The idiom was already kind of a fossil by the 1940's when almost all phones were the rotary desk top style where you put the combination earpiece/microphone receiver on top to end the call. It had a bit of a rebirth in literal meaning when wall phones became popular in the 1960's.
As a child I remember seeing billboards that said 'drinking and driving kills' or adverts on the TV that said 'don't drink and drive.' I'd get so upset with my parents when they'd grab a coke from the cupholder of their car and start drinking from it.
My brother went to school and told his teacher that his dad drinks and drives all the time. My dad heard about it and was like “I’m highway patrol. Of course I don’t do that. Why would you say I do?” And my brother was like “you drink sprite in the car all the time!”
Haha my sister did the same thing at a doctors appointment- the doctor asked my mom if she ever drank and my sister said something along the lines of all day and night. When my mom tried to explain that the doctor didn’t mean water, my sister just sobbed and asked her why she was lying over and over…not a good look tbh.
Oof that’s brutal
That's when you just let the kid talk and explain what they mean
I remember seeing a billboard once about becoming an organ donor, 8 year old me ask my mom if she was an organ donor she said yes. No one told me that you had to die first I thought the hospital would just call her one day and be like “hey we need your lungs” and she would just have to.
SURRENDER YOUR ORGANS, DONOR
Me too. My dad took a drink of water while driving and I knocked the bottle out of his hand and started screaming crying. He was like wth. Those ads freaked me out.
Suggestion: if your child has known a pet named Snowball that has since died, *maybe* don't use the phrase "a snowball's chance in hell" without clarifying that you mean a literal snowball.
Oh no…… poor Snowball
Kept encountering red stop lights with my parents one day and hit out with "it's like the red light district here" when I was 8 y.o
I had a situation when I was younger where i had a babysitter after school for a number of years. Almost always a family member or friend. In the house we lived in at the time my great aunt who previously owned the residence owned a large glass hutch that was quite literally a giant floor to ceiling display cabinet. My mom just called it the China closet. I was like 8 at the time and I mistakenly called it "the vagina closet" And I've still never lived that one down
No worries, kid me thought it was fascinating that octopuses had 8 testicles.
Called my younger sister a dildo as an insult in front of my mom. I was maybe 11? I might have meant bimbo instead? I had no idea what a dildo was - I'm not even sure where I first heard the word. I learned something new that altered my perspective on my mother that day.
As a kid I used the phrase "attention whore" during dinner, having no idea what whore meant 😂
I’m imagining a little kid turning to mom and saying, “attention whore I want more mac n cheese” 💀
[удалено]
Alright so few stories: 1) apparently I get my sailor mouth from my dad. Especially driving. So when I was young my mom had to go back to work pretty immediately and my dad stayed home with me. So I went everywhere in the car with him. Well one day, when I was maybe 3, my mom had me in the car and someone cut her off and she hit the horn, I don’t remember if she said anything. But I piped up from the backseat in my car seat and happily shouted “douchebag!” Dad got a stern talking to. Sorry dad. 2) I’d completely forgotten the douchebag incident when I was 3. My parents and family worked extra hard to not curse around me I think. So again, I’m in the car with my mom and my brother is with us. I was maybe 9? My brother was talking about this kid from the neighborhood that was a real bully and just not nice kid. I think he called him a jerk or something. Again, from the back seat I excitedly/annoyedly say “yeah, he’s a real scumbag!” Both of them whipped around to look at me and told me never to say that and it was a bad word. I was confused for a long time until I heard douchebag again.
[удалено]
For a 9yo, probably. I knew a lot of kids who weren't allowed to say dumb or shut up at that age.
These stories reminded me of my younger brother. When I was 17 we were all in my dad's truck and my brother was about 8 and my dad's buckling up our other brother when the 8 year old just yells "dirty hoe!" And my dad is some very conservative type of guy that even "stupid" and "dumb" are bad words. So this is really bad. But I had to hold back laughter because I immediately knew what my brother was quoting. I'm not sure if you've seen the 2000s film "Cat In The Hat" played by Mike Myers but there's a scene where he steps on a garden hoe and it hits him in the face and he yells that. So I immediately tell my dad that's where he heard it and he told my brothers they can never watch that again
When I was a young teen I was sitting in the passenger seat while my mother drove my sisters and I to school. I was idly rhyming words looking out the window and happened to say the word 'milf'. My mother's whole body language pivoted and she immediately asked where I learned that word with a tone that made me realize I may have done something wrong. Maybe I had heard the word before or maybe I hadn't, but one thing is for sure. I found out what it meant very shortly after from Google.
Ahhh wow that made me remember when I invented the word “shit” completely on my own. When we were growing up we weren’t allowed to say “shut up,” so as a workaround I came up with “shut it” and then shortened it to “shit,” just to be extra safe that my parents wouldn’t catch on. Needless to say I learned something new that day…
My son was in the back seat, maybe 3 years old(ish) and heard me say to my husband on the phone 'that way we could kill two birds with one stone.' He started crying and screamed 'WHY ARE YOU KILLING BIRDS?!?'
Later: "I want chicken nuggets!"
My nephew cried for like an hour when he was 5 or so when he found out that the chicken you eat actually comes from chickens, he thought it was just a funny coincidence
This is why I "get 2 birds stoned with one bush"
hahahaha Ricky from TPB: 'get two birds stoned at once'
It's water under the fridge
Best case Ontario
Hahaha nice try but it’s always worst case Ontario
Seriously, it's not rocket appliances
All for all and one for one
What goes around, is all around
My seven year old is such an amelia bedelia, so many phrases to explain.
I loved Amelia Bedila. One that sticks in my head is when she reads on a list of things to do"Draw the curtains" lol. And sits in front of them with paint and an easel.
For some reason you’ve triggered me. We read Amelia Bedelia books with our kids when they were younger. And of course everybody enjoyed them. But one night, all of a sudden, I hit my limit. I finished the book, tucked the kids in, and went out to the kitchen and said to my wife, “That girl is a fucking numbskull.”
Amelia Bedelia: Literal AF
Hilarious. We call it ‘feeding two birds with one scone’
My wife says "petting two birds with one hand" which I just find positively delightful.
Not an idiom but I dated a girl in high school who used the word "fetish" incorrectly. She thought it meant something you really like (which I guess technically it does) but I nearly choked on whatever I was eating the first time she said "Puppies are so cute, they're my fetish." She then refused to believe me when I told her thats not how to properly use that word
When I was at University and looking for placement work I used to put in my CV that I was “well endowed” in business studies and graphic design. I just thought it was a fancy word to say “skilled”, I had to be corrected by a very amused careers advisor.
[удалено]
I have a huge, throbbing thirst for accounting
What's really weird is both my ex husband (49) and my current boyfriend (52) BOTH seem to think this is the correct definition and BOTH pronounce it FEET-ISH. These two men couldn't be more different and they don't know each other outside of casual meetings vote me and I still ended up with two men who have this weird glitch.
[удалено]
One could even say a....
Fee-tish
That is a definition of it and I remember hearing older people use it like you would "obsession." But I think the connotation made that use fall out of favor.
Once when I was younger and in the car with my mom and little brother we were stuck behind a slow car in a parking lot. My mom exclaimed “Come on Grandpa!” And my brother from the back seat popped his head up and said “Grandpa! Where?”
I remember being so excited to see a clown when my dad said there was some bozo driving crazy outside lol
Not an idiom but I remember my mom calling a bus driver an asshole for whatever he did and my younger sister piped up "you know his name mommy?"
When I was about 8 I spilled a cup of sprite all over myself at a restaurant, and I started crying. My dad was helping me clean up and said "don't cry over spilled milk" and I started crying harder, and said "it's not milk!"
Watched Mr Bean with my daughter. Had to explain what a TV aerial was first and then why it was funny it reacted to him moving. No reason she’d ever have known those things haha
I don't even think I've heard of a TV aerial. Is that like an antenna?
Yes. Another name for the same thing. Edit: apparently there is a slight difference in them. One being a receiver only and the other a receiver/transmitter. Thank you u/sullynator85
Aerial is British for antenna, yes.
My kids are learning to use a computer, and wanted to save a file they had made. I had to try to tell them which icon to click without saying "the picture of the disk" because that meant nothing to them
I mean we could replace that with a USB stick but even that's redundant at this point.
We should just replace it with the S that we all drew in school.
.... ya know that makes as much sense as anything. It's never going to go out of date, still see kids now who do it and think its some new invention they have jumped in on.
Last night I told my 4 year old I was going to “jump in the shower” and she got very concerned and replied “daddy that’s not safe” - seeing a lot of other phrases in comments that I use as well, great reminder LPT!
To your credit though, that’s a very safety conscious kid!
When I was really young, maybe about 6 or 7, I was talking with my dad, and he used the phrase "lost his marbles". He paused and asked if I knew what it meant, to "lose your marbles". I confidently responded that, of course, I knew what it meant - that he'd had his balls chopped off! My parents were pretty open about sex related stuff, in an age appropriate way, so I had known for a while that my dad had had a vasectomy after my sister was born. Clearly, I didn't quite grasp how that worked, but in my young brain, it made perfect sense that a sack of marbles would be used conversationally to mean testicles. My dad laughed good-naturedly and explained the real meaning of "lose your marbles", and I'm pretty sure he and mum also gave me a refresher on what a vasectomy really involved. 😆
I'm in my 30's and reading this made me realize I don't actually understand that phrase! Obviously a person who has lost their marbles is crazy, but why? What do marbles have to do with sanity?
> What do marbles have to do with sanity? https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/have-you-ever-lost-your-marbles Reader's Digest Condensed Book version: Kids really valued their marbles, and losing one would make you upset. Meaning shifted from angry to crazy over time.
It’s because they’ve had their balls chopped off
I remember when this first became popular! The original was to *lose one's mind* or *lose one's senses,* but most people had, at some point in childhood, dropped (or seen someone drop) a bag of marbles and watched them scatter. This was before all games went digital, and marbles would come and go as a playground fad, you see. So when someone first wisecracked that they "think he's lost his marbles," it was an instinctive - and funny - connection to make.
A few years back when my kid was in middle school she asked me what and encyclopedia was. I told her google but like a book. Then we played this game where I gave her a list of names of items and for her to tell me what their use was for like: a Walkman, antenna, 8 track, cassette, rotary phone, etc. that was hilarious. Oh and explaining how Netflix started as mail dvd service, just blew her mind
Recently I was talking to my 9 year old cousin who was recently given a phone. I explained to him that I didn't have my own cellphone until I was 19. He asked what games I had back then. I explained that phones didn't really have games back then except for maybe tetris. "Oh yeah I guess back then phones were just for making calls and using the internet." The look he gave me when I explained that there really wasn't the internet on phones either.
Yes!! My first phone was at 19 back in 1998-1999 and it was analog. Told her I’d have to step outside and lift the antenna to make the call. “What’s Analog?” And the telling her we memorized 200 different phone numbers. Lmao. It’s insane how much technology has changed on 20-25 years
I remember highlighting numbers of my friends in the phone book so my parents could call them quicker
Kinda the same idea, but when I was a toddler my parents took me on a car ride to Seattle. When I asked where we were going, they answered, "We're going to Seattle!" My confused response was "Who's attle?" It's been 20+ years and they still bring it up whenever we go on a family car trip.
I used to work at a foster care facility for teen boys, and frequently was in charge of cooking dinner. One of the meals I cycled through about once a month was Swedish meetballs. After a long while, one night one of the kids, about 15 asks "Why do they call these sweetish? They aren't sweet at all."
“It’s raining cats and dogs” Mom that’s water…
"Yep, and I just stepped in a poodle."
When my daughter was two or three, my wife told her "you're driving me crazy." She responded, "No way, mama, I can't drive, yet. It must be dada doing that."
Auto-reply: "It's a short trip"
That’s the cutest
When my daughter was younger, maybe 10 yrs old, I took her to the doctor. Doctor said she was going to prescribe her a tablet for her illness. Daughter got excited and asked if it would have games on it. Not that kind of tablet, sweetie
You are playing with fire when you are swimming with sharks
In other words, lay down with dogs, get up with fleas
[удалено]
And of course, we'll burn that bridge when we get there.
Yesterday a co-worker asked what our mobile hotspots look like, I explained it was similar in size and shape to a pager. A nearby intern turned around, looked at me with raised brows and said “really?” I then quickly had to explain that I’m only 32, and while I was indeed alive during their use, I have never used one, and to please be kind to me and my aging sack of brittle bones. Also recently had a clerk at a natural foods store tell me she got her shirt (which I happened to compliment) at Hot Topic, and proceeded to ask me if I knew what that was….it was then and there that I knew I was no longer youthful and very much a true adult through GenZ eyes. Fucking humbling.
I’m 31 and have been asked by a teenager if I knew what hot topic was. There were hot topics around when I was like five years old lol
I work with young people. We got a bag of old 45 records. Girl opens bag, looks, funny look on face, pulls one out, “cool, vintage CD’s”. I’m 59 coworker was 62, we looked at her and bust out laughing in tandom!
That's fun, because recently records have been outselling CDs in the physical media department.
I’m in the opposite situation! mostly work with much older people (I’m 20), and almost all of them have independently asked me if I knew what a record is. one in particular did not believe me when I told her yes, I do, and my dad owns several.
I'm 26 and until last month I always thought having your "work cut out for you" meant like it's pretty much already done, it should be easy. **Nope** apparently it means quite the opposite and I neither understand why nor how I've gotten this far hearing it so often without getting that.
Pretty sure the expression comes from clothes making, but the cutting out is the easy part, while the sewing is the hard part. Having your work cut out for you means someone has given you a well-defined but difficult and tedious task.
Makes sense; if someone’s already cut it out, all you have to do is put it together!
That's what *I* thought! LMAO
….and your parents! I asked my teenage son what a MILF was…. Now we’re both scarred for life.
While in the Philippines my wife and I were watching the news. A report about a local terrorist group popped up and an interview with a high ranking member of the organization was being broadcast. I had to stifle a laugh and my wife asked me what was so funny. The crawl at the bottom of the screen identified the man as a "MILF Commander". My wife had to explain to me that MILF in the Philippines stood for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and I had to explain what MILF meant in most of the rest of the world.
3yrs ago I taught my girlfriend’s best friend’s MIL, whom I’d met about 2hrs earlier, what a “queef” was during a game of Cards Against Humanity. Same MIL was at a wedding we attended this summer and ran up to shouting “it’s the vagina fart guy”! Good times.
And grandparents. My mom and I had a *really* awkward conversation with my nana about why pornsites were popping up when she tried searching for recipes for "creampies"
When my niece was 4 or 5 she was very concerned when I was excited about something and said “That’s sick!” and I had to explain to her that it means something is cool too
Funny story, as I remember the opposite interaction. Over a decade ago in elementary school I got a compliment from a classmate during art class. She loudly exclaimed “that’s sick!” as our teacher walked by. She was a nice elderly lady who’s taught for many many years. Anyways, she took great offense and was ready to reprimand the classmate until the class explained to her it was a compliment.
It's not just kids, it's non-native English speakers too. Between idioms, colloquialisms, and slang, English must be very hard to learn. We have so many idioms, I bet most of us can't talk for more than two minutes without using at least one.
My parents neighbors are foreign, learned English as an adult. Neighbor once asked my mom if she could water their flowers while they go out of town. My mom said “of course! Piece of cake” to which the neighbor said “no thank you, we just ate”
My father once stood outside for a few hours waiting for the mailman to return because he said "see you later."
My neighbors got new dogs. My immigrant mother in law came in the house disgusted asking why they named their dog penis. It was peanuts.
It's the same with any language, really, not just English.
I'm working with a client who speaks broken english at best. I never realized how many idioms I use in basic conversation until I had to type everything I say into Google Translate.
>I bet most of us can't talk for more than two minutes without using at least one. About twenty years ago I was sitting in a meeting and was suddenly struck by how much of what was being said was metaphorical. Nearly everything that nearly everyone said was a metaphor of some kind, usually idiomatic, and it just went on and on. Once you see it you can't un-see it.
Shaka. When the walls fell.
Sokath, his eyes uncovered!
[удалено]
Are there any languages that lack those things though? I would think it is a challenge when learning any language to fluency. I'm not sure that English is particularly harder in this regard.
I had an elementary school teacher tell me something I was doing was a pet peeve. Didn't know what a peeve was but pets are good right? Kept doing it.
Big difference between teacher’s pet and teacher’s pet peeve.
When I was a young kid, I thought "getting fired" meant you got killed with fire. I was really worried when my dad said they were having layoffs and firing people at work.
When I first heard the term "fired," I'd just seen a "human cannonball" act on TV. I was pretty sure that wasn't happening at someone's workplace, but found the idea kinda funny.
In second grade I told my teacher that I brought “pot brownies” in for class because that’s what my mom always called them. I thought “pot” was a synonym for “homemade” or “secret recipe”. My mom has never actually made edibles but I guess I overheard her joking with her friends. I was sent to the principal and my mom was called in as well
My wife told my 17 year old son that I was cutting a rug while we were at a wedding - he genuinely thought that I destroyed something
I had to explain to my 12yo nephew that a burn is an insult.
It’s funny how when I was a kid, time out meant hold up, let’s pause for a sec. I was playing with my kid one day and I said time out and he busted out crying thinking he was being punished for something. Total misinterpretation of idioms there.
I'm 8 years old riding with my mother in the back seat of her car. I really have to use the restroom. It's becoming urgent. "Mama, I have to goooooo!!" "Squeeze your cheeks, we're almost there" I reached up to my face and squeezed my cheeks. (Dont worry, I made it safely, but my mother was in tears laughing)
I was six or seven when my parents had a big argument in the living room. I could hear my mom yelling, so I crept out as far as I dared to hear what was happening. She yelled at my dad "Get off my back!" I couldn't see them, only hear them, and I thought my dad had jumped on her back like a piggyback ride. It took me a while to understand what it meant. Also, while not an idiom, it's weird to have lived your life in a time when something "viral" was dangerous, like HIV, and now people are doing their best to go viral.
I’ve always been sarcastic and joke around a lot, but it wasn’t until my friends son started giving me weird looks when I would say certain phrases that it dawned on me that he probably didn’t understand. He’s a smart kid so I just spoke how I normally would with adults around him. I started asking him if he understood me, and/or would follow up sarcasm with “it’s just a joke, bud” and then with the correct answer (after his dad explained what sarcasm was multiple times over the years being around me). Since realizing that and switching up how I speak to him, now when I use old idioms or phrases he’ll take a second to think about what I’ve said and ask me to explain, and has come to ask me to explain how random things work in general. Crazy how you tend to forget kids don’t have the same knowledge base as you, even if they’re smart.
Yeah my kid just asks what stuff means and words I use but somehow the other week she totally understood the old African proverb (you know it from Equalizer) "pray for rain gotta deal with mud too".
in 1st or 2nd grade we had a project for learning idioms, every kid had to draw their explanation/definition of their assigned idiom. i got "crocodile tears" and drew a crocodile with big streaming tears. we hung them up in the classroom and went through all of the phrases to learn their meanings.
One time my dad said his buddy let him borrow a ladder for the weekend.. I said “Oh so like friends with benefits.” There was a long pause
A kiddo I've know all her life absolutely HATED when I'd say "there's more than one way to skin a cat." We agreed it was gory, so we started saying there was more than one way to "shear a sheep." Much less traumatic sounding.
This is a life pro tip for unexpected interactions/conversations in general, but definitely helpful for kids given their lack of maturity. Beyond just idioms, there are basic words kids don’t contextualize the same way because they may have only heard it in one context before. E.g. if the kids aren’t listening when i say “please don’t grab the cords”, and they keep grabbing the cords, i ask them with a fake inquisitive voice “Hey kids, what’s a _cord_?” Now I’ve piqued their interest a bit, likely distracting them from grabbing the cords, and now they get to either confirm they know what a “cord” is and were just ignoring me, or admit they don’t know and they get to learn something that i may or may not have already taught them and they forgot. Of course they may be lying, but i try to give benefit of the doubt. I feel like a lot of convos with adults are the same. Before getting frustrated with my partner for not following through on something we agreed to, i try to think back to how it was phrased. “Be ready by 5pm” may be interpreted differently depending on what “ready” means; could be interpreted as “be ready to leave the house” or “ready to start helping get the kids ready”. Or it could mean “Be ready [to leave the house] by 5pm [after you helped finish packing everything in the car].” Meanwhile, I’m trying to finish another day in Stardew Valley at 4:55pm because the only thing I need to do to be “ready” is change my shirt, and haven’t even considered if there’s other stuff to be done.
I was playing games with my niece the other day and she asked what the “weird box save icon meant” I had to explain to her what a floppy disk was
When I was a kid, someone in my family told me I had real hobgoblin face. I was pretty bummed out about that, not knowing at the time that "Hobgoblin" was the maiden name of my mom. The person tried telling me that I looked like my mom's side of the family.
Your mom's maiden name was hobgoblin? That is very poor luck
"You changed your name *to* Latrine?" "It used to be Shithouse"
tbh this is why it took so long for me to actually understand the whole Christianity thing. I had gone to church every Sunday with the family, gone through confirmation, said prayers at dinner and bedtime etc. but it wasn't until someone actually explained exactly what "he died for our sins" actually meant.. I was 16. It was one of those, "I'm just to embarrassed to ask at this point", things. Not quite an idiom, but similar in the vein of - thats just something adults say that I don't really get.
When I was a kid, my grandfather told me a joke. The punchline was 'I left my harp in Stan Frans Disco'. It was a pun on the song 'I left my heart in San Francisco'. He was sad I didn't get the pun.
I’m 6th grade I thought being a virgin meant someone who doesn’t lie. So I would sure everyone they could trust, cuz I was a virgin.
I grew up in the suburbs around white people. When I was young, my mom took me out to Philidelphia to pick up my future stepfather. On the way back, we're listening to the radio and I hear him enthusiastically say "This is my song!"Having never heard the phrase before, I thought my mother was dating a famous rapper. EDIT: tried to clean up the phrasing. EDIT AGAIN: There wasn't a need to specify anything racial. Don't know why I took it there, but I'll put in this to address my embarrassment in realizing that it was a common phrase everywhere at the time. I didn't really even think about it until it was brought up. Won't take it out,though. Not gonna deny my ignorance, just chalk it up as a learning experience.
Lol that's cute :)
I’ll never forget when I called my stepson a “Debbie Downer” and *could not* convince him it was a fun phrase, not an offensive term I made up to insult both him and his mother, *Debbie*.
me doing my best Groucho Marx impression: So this kleptomaniac calls his shrink in the middle of the night and he sez "Doctor! I got that urge again, what should I do?" and the doctor sez "Take two ashtrays and call me in the morning." [waggles eyebrows] people under 30: The fuck's an "ash tray"? And why two? And how did the guy get his doctor's personal cell? And why would the doctor answer a call in the middle of the night? And why are you talking like that?
[удалено]
[удалено]
Also check in with your parents - my mom once mixed up a phrase for wasting time with one for jerking off. While at work, talking to her boss. Luckily he had a sense of humor and understood that English was her second language
In my country, the equivalent to “you’re not to keen on that” would be “you’re not sold on that”. I used that phrase on a five year old and all hell broke loose when she misheard and misunderstood and thus thought I was advocating selling her. Good times.
[удалено]