UKC

For absolutely years, I thought the expression was "make end's meat", which I believed to be a weird  play on "bringing home the bacon". I spent a lot of time puzzling over how this variation had come about, until a eureka moment a couple of years ago when the scales fell from my eyes.

I imagine a lot of people have stories like this; expressions you mis-heard or misunderstood, probably at a fair young age, and spent years not knowing you were getting wrong.

Like how until my mid 20's I thought 'rhinoviruses' were so-called because they looked like rhinoceroses, the big African animals, when you examined them (the virus, not the big African animal) under a microscope...

What are some of yours?

May I interest anyone in some genuine Chester Draws?

https://www.gumtree.com/search?search_category=all&q=chester%20draws

That is exactly what I'm talking about! And yes, thank you, for such a brilliant example!

youtube.com/watch?v=XnXKVY-_i2c&

'For all intensive purposes' is another favourite I hear from time to time. 

For all intensive purposes - sounds like the marketing slogan for a highly strung management consultancy firm!

Going off on a tandem. 

I always thought there was really clever surgeon called Brian in Birmingham.

That makes so much sense as well!

You'll have to explain that one!

While you're drinking your kipper tie, you'll realise it's not exactly Brian surgery.

I was told a story (live from NZ this morning) by someone who was using a radio channel and was puzzled by someone with a synthesised voice coming in over the top of the comms occasionally and apparently saying "Load of Old Tits" just after he'd spoken.

A day or two later his rechargeable battery ran out for the first time (he'd just got the radio and heard the voice properly for the first time - "Low Battery Voltage" - apparently it had a Chinese accent which is why he had trouble realising what it was saying.

Think I've posted this before but was confused as the god bloke I was bought up to believe in was called Peter, at the end of mass we'd all say 'thanks Peter god' 

My sister asked my fuming dad once when we were desperately looking for a car park space why there should be some places for "bad shoulders only".

Fantastic, I never knew! I like that there is one in Chester-le-Street

Someone on here used the phrase armature astronomy which I thought was a pretty good blend of armchair and amateur.

As  far as misheard song lyrics go, kissthisguy.com used to be a good one and i was glad I wasn't the only person to sing this.

I spent a few years wincing at work when an otherwise smart colleague used to go on (during sales pitches) about a range of equipment running the full gambit of capability. 

Said to us by an estate agent “don’t worry about the marks in the ceiling, it’s from where they used to burn incest”

Assent or Accent of a route

That's just spelling though isn't it? I think the OP is more about thinking a word is a different word

As a child at junior school I always pictured some graph paper and/or map making during The Lord's Prayer (we had the version "Our Father which art in Heaven" but we never had it written down, and I had a vague notion of "we chart", and knew that navigation could involve charting some sort of progress. 

An ex-girlfriend used the expression "escape goat", until I twigged what she was actually saying and laughed until it hurt. Up until two minutes ago I was under the impression that the ex in question was Mrs Stitcht, but she vigorously denies that this was the case.

 (it was her).

Not a mis-hearing but in the same vein.  You know when you approach a roundabout, there is usually a sign that says "Reduce speed now"?  Aged around 7, I misread that as "Rescue speed now" and having decided that was what it said, read it that way for years. So many questions! Mystery finally solved when I asked someone how fast rescue speed is!

I read about 'an unsuspecting corner' in MBR mountain biking magazine quite a few years ago, I half wanted to write in and ask how one could catch a corner out. 

Edit: I didn't want to be that kind of smarty pants.

I hear there's lots of people 'furlonged' due to Corona.....

I read “To Let” signs as “toilet” until way beyond an age where I should have known better, again because of it having bedded in to my brain at a young age

I used to like the Christmas carol "A wean in a manger". I got confused when I moved to Devon at 9 and weans weren't called weans and I discovered that the Carol made no sense! What does "away in a manger" even mean? My version was much more sensible!

Or indeed, due to Corvid 19!

More of a misheard lyric, but a friend of mine would sing along to The Police’s hit “Canary in a coma”

I had an Iranian mate who was great at getting English expressions wrong. His best was when we were talking disparagingly about a mutual acquaintance. My friend said "I'm not so sure about him. He's one of those blokes with a finger in every tart!" 

Yes it was.

I don’t understand this 

As ready as a liver bee

Nice work if you can get it....

Mrs Diluted is fond of putting people 'on a pedal stool'.

Which could be read as somewhat putting your foot in it.

Considering that coronaviruses are so named because they look like crowns, that's not unreasonable at all...

One Shrove Tuesday, a lovely colleague D at work, heard another colleague and I discussing what fish we would be having as was traditional the next day. Later D took me to one side and told me she was very disappointed in me. I couldn't for the life of me wonder why. D explained it was because I was planning to have fish next day and not corned beef! When asked why I should have corned beef, she replied "because it's Hash Wednesday". She swore her and her husband had been doing so for years.

http://www.amiright.com/

On a related topic there is an amazing thread on 'eggcorns' on the other channel

https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,29715.0.html

I recall something about 'our father tortoise'

My nan (bless her) used to refer to human beans. She also used to wander around singing the old Dionne Warwick song 'Why do you have to be a Darth Vader?'. No wonder I grew up the way I did.

I've got a friend who grew up with the expression

'horses f#ck horses' which actually carries the original meaning when you think it through

My first trip to a Chinese restaurant as a boy I read 'lychees' as 'leaches'. My dad ordered some with icecream and when they arrived he proceeded to slurp them up commenting on how slimy they were. No wonder I grew up the way I did...

She was telling the truth . It's a commonly held notion that Pancake Tuesday is followed by (H) Ash Wednesday.

And if there's any pancakes left over from Tuesday you have them with the hash.

You had colleagues that would take you to one side to express disappointment that outside of work, you were not following what they thought was some minor tradition?! 

Lass who was interviewed on the news who happily tweeted about nearly running a cyclist off the road said during her 'apology' "...things have been blown out of all precaution".

Was it them that sang about Sue Lawley and Anna Friel? 

Great thread!

Ha, this reminds me of when I went to The Boleyn, a fairly rough West Ham pub in Upton Park, about 10 years ago with a mate of mine who lived around there. A sign in the men's toilets said "Anyone caught using drugs will be persecuted"

I found this hard to believe, as most of the cocaine being snorted in said toiled seemed to be being bought from the barmaid.

That's clearly nonsense, because ...

'Harold be thy name'.

On carols, I was convinced that the three kings came from a place called Orien Tar.

It's a doggy dog world!

youtube.com/watch?v=5ExXOIvY9V0&

Other aged folk may remember the messages which used to be heard on the Home Service (now Radio 4) after the news when relatives of people at death's door were being sought. This involved giving the person's name, followed by " last heard of in such-a-place". According to family legend, at about age 5, I asked "why has everyone lost their dog?"

I thought the Orient must be populated by little people...

I used to think Pantomime was Pantomine for years. Also although its not quite the OP I have just found out how to open an OXO cube after over 60 years of doing it wrong!

Me too, but all this is nothing compared to the poor boy who was puzzled for many years by his father’s philosophical musings - “Knowledge is Power, France is Bacon”.

Like a bat on a hill 

My mother  recorded me as asking

When ee say lead us not into the station does it mean Bournemouth West or Bournemouth Central?

Reminds me of a sign above the wash hand basin in the kitchen of a chippy  - "Hand washing - very impotent!"

I always wondered why we had to scatter after we'd ploughed the fields. 

" Oy! You! Get off my land ! Who asked you to plough my fields! Go on, run, you little bastards!"

Not a misheard phrase more sheer ignorance on my part.

Growling-up in Hartlepool in the early 70’s life was as you might imagine very centred on the North, no holidays abroad, and a TV was still something my parents were yet to be able to afford. Hearing that more affluent friends had been to Torquay for their summer hols rather than Sealsands , I thought (and for quite a while - read years) ‘wow, you went to Spain, on a plane, WOW!’

I'm now worldly wise, much improved on my callow youth, have visited almost every country possible through work as a comm’s engineer, but still hear ‘Torquay’ as being exotic and not of these isles!

The number of people who have been sufficiently proud of the UK's lockdown rules to go around *flaunting* them has been pretty remarkable...

Wasn't it the late Terry Wogan who used to sing "Take your teeth out now" to the ABBA song? 

Years ago I knew someone who misheard a line from Mr Tambourine Man.

"Silhouetted by the sea" became "Silly wet head by the sea"

Dave

I thought the hail Mary included "and let the petrol light shine upon me" rather than "perpetual". 

Is that just poor spelling and/or "autocorrect"? My favourite popular Covid-19-related malapropism has been peoples' conditions trending to infinity on mathematical graphs, yes, the army of asymptotic people That one is quite common on these forums, which of course are usually a bastion of perfect grammar and spelling. 

A cousin of mine insisted that Rod Stewart's classic song "Baby Jane" must be "Lady Jane" because it would be stupid to be singing about a baby. In mitigation she was 9 years old, speaking in a second language, and making a pretty good point

Paranoia is one side effect, I believe. 

That's a belter! 

Are they flaunting their flounting?  

for years I genuinely thought that freddy mercury in Crazy Little thing Called Love was singing

There goes my baby
She knows how to rock 'n' roll
She drives me crazy
She gives me hot and cold fever
Then she leaves me in a cocoa sweat

Possibly brought on by excessive consumption?

The popular song: Gala - Freed from Desire

My childhood lyrics went, "my lover's got no money, he's got his strombolis'"

Also Alicia Keys - New York

"New York, I've become a wet dream tomato, there's nothing you can't do"

I grew out of the former but can't ever un-hear the latter.

Religion-related examples form a rich vein. I recall a Jane Horrocks sketch on TV relating to the nativity where "round yon virgin" became the local fat lad Round John Virgin. Another Lord's Prayer one related to a school in Long Eaton where children regularly intoned "lead us not into Trent Station", a notoriously bleak interchange in the middle of nowhere.

Another childhood example: my mother called to me (aged about 12) in the kitchen to put the kettle on. "How much water?"    Came the reply " Oh, just cuddle the elephant."

Erm...I genuinely thought it was John Virgin! 

I'm 48 years old and just found this out 2 minutes ago!

This thread is driving me nuts... I bolted a sector at sella called 'misheard song lyrics' but UKC won't let me paste in the link... My friend Charlie heard 'tromboleece' rather than strombolis.

My sister's one is my favourite though - 'no woman no pride'

I was convinced they had a song called "Summer Night Sinning" when it first came out - sounded exciting

Always liked the old idea that the equator was a menagerie lion running round the middle of the earth

Once your ankle is fixed you'll be able to get back on the whores.

Your partner might not be impressed.

I only found out relatively recently that there was a term for this- mondegreen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen

"American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, writing that as a girl, when her mother read to her from Percy's Reliques, she had misheard the lyric "layd him on the green" in the fourth line of the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" as "Lady Mondegreen".[3]"

"Gladly my cross-eyed bear', for anyone who remembers The Perishers..

A mutual friend thought for ages that the one hit wonder by Stan Ridgeway was called "Camel Plage".

I thought this was going to be a great thread, but in the end it was a bit of a damp squid.

Presumably other drier squids, who prefer sunny climes and a beach lounger, are available?

b

My Mum used to say my room looked like a Bomsitit, and for my entire childhood and well into adulthood I just assumed Bomsitit was a noun, some old thing from my mother's past that I wasn't aware of.

She was actually saying it looks like a bomb's hit it!

Not a saying but- having never seen 'Filet Mignon' written and only heard spoken mainly by Americans on TV, I assumed it was a 'flamin' yon' and thought it was an americanism for flame grilled steak, which made sense!

Only after I heard someone properly enunciate it, that i realised it french

And another one:

Climbing at Lawrencefield Quarry. A friend said he'd just climbed a route with a name he pronounced as Mare-in-Goo.  We couldn't find it until the penny dropped. MERINGUE!!!

In reverse, I am still convinced that Lanzarote is in Wales. 

As a French-English bilingual, I found it incredibly embarrassing on my first trip to America, in 2008, when ordering a steak, to find that my English pronunciation "fill-et" was repeated back to me by an American waitress in the French pronunciation "feel-eh". I wanted to say "oh I know it's supposed to be pronounced like that but you see in England we've anglicised it and how odd that here you haven't -rather like when one wants to take the care for a 'valet' treatment and one doesn't know whether to use the proper or improper pronunciation as one may make you look like an idiot, the other a snob!"

But as I grew up in England not France, I of course just sat there and said nothing and died inside.

Eric Prydz - Call On Me: "I'm saving for a new settee". 

But the what hell actually is it?

I believe the Bananarama rendering of "I am your Venus" was misheard by some people

I've only just got this, took me ages! Well I had to ask my wife, who is a) a Brummie, and b) sharper than me.

 still don't get it!!!

An 'unsuspecting corner' - 'Boo!' - 'Oh, you got me there'.

Pre 1965, then...?

<checks profile - oh, I see... chapeau, sir, chapeau>

"Clear as Mustard"

"Internal and Outternal"

"Cleaver-er"

Do I need to have read the same MTB magazines as you, in order to see what’s funny here? Is it some long-running in-joke about someone once writing “unsuspecting” instead of “unexpected”? 

I'm not sure, that I got a like originally seems to suggest that somebody else understood it, perhaps it just doesn't translate with some people like yourself due to different ways of thinking?

It's often the case in life, different ways of thinking, takes on humour, tastes in music...

I was the like. I took the joke to be, rather than the corner catching the rider out unexpectedly, the rider is the one sneaking up on the corner and giving the poor unsuspecting corner a fright...

Having been brought up on the coast East of Edinburgh we had  "and lead us not into Drem station".

I won't spoil it for you. Try saying it in your best Brum accent!

That's amazing! I can't unhear that now. Have you heard the famous work by Mendelssohn? Op.70 No.20 commonly known as 'Thanks Peter God'

youtube.com/watch?v=E2n_cUdPOOk&t=3618

Left over pancakes?  You'll be the sort that saves half bottles of wine for the next day. 

The 1967 Cream album Disraeli Gears was given that name when a roadie mispronounced bicycle derailleur gears. 

My son always called the wizard in LOTR...Grandalf. 

I understood that but I didn’t (and don’t) see where it fitted into this thread unless someone has spent a lifetime thinking “unsuspecting” means “unexpected”. 

A friend just confessed to me that he wrote, in a university essay, “with the benefit of Heinz-sight”

I heard this exact same thing for years, was very confused by "God" only being his surname!

I prefer "Morning Wood" by Grieg:

youtube.com/watch?v=wCEzh3MwILY&

Rosemary combed her hair and took a cabbage into town

youtube.com/watch?v=agdoeRpTfHg&t=158

In a similar vein, an errant history pupil wrote about the 'Pubic' Wars in his exam. His paper was posted on the staffroom notice board!

on my first club trip I heard someone talking about "technical climbing" in the minibus and tried to imagine what they meant.  I thought perhaps they meant something that wasn't actually real climbing but was still technically climbing, somehow in some unimaginable way.

I thought similar when I first heard the term "simul-climbing". I thought it referred to some sort of simulated form of climbing.

From " Lucy in the sky" -  there's the line " when the girl with colitis goes by".

I think this thread is a damp squid.

I've had fun reading through this thread again. I had forgotten about this one.

One of the students I climbed with had finished Finals and had gone to Cornwall leaving the local pub tel number for any messages: "Your car is ready for collection", he was told.  In fact he was required for a Viva!

University entrance interviews produce some gems:I particularly like this exchange

Have you any particular interests? 

Astrology, 

Err, I think you mean Astronomy

No, Astrology

youtube.com/watch?v=i6c4Nupnup0&

This anecdote is incomplete. Was it astronomy or astrology? A person can be interested in astrology even if they are about to go to university 

You've obviously missed the point. 

Are you going to bother to explain it to a thicko like me, or is it only for the swots? Is it some phonetic pun? I am happy to be schooled and patronised, if there is some humour to be enjoyed. 

Off on a tangent as my (very politely) locking horns with the (seemingly) intransigent jcw seems to have stemmed the flow....I have a feeling that I was some years older than I should have been at the time I realised that you don’t plant bones to grow meat.