Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

How a candle works.

Practically everything.

that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character.

DO you have a Mac?

The best things about macs is that making any character is stupid easy.

¢™
øºÖØ°

&¶¶¶¶¶¶

!

That (most) BMWs are named according to engine size (I was a car freak as a child but never knew this until being informed by a German flatmate while I was a PhD student).

i.e. 318 = 3 series 1.8 litre engine etc.

Didn't know that black and green olives are identical, just different stage of maturity, until a few months ago.

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago. Likewise Lipps Inc.

I've got a mac and I still don't know how to do any of, um, ^ those ^

I end up going to wikipedia and copy-and-pasting when I want unusual characters

The cows-and-bulls thing, plus Adam Ant, are the only things on this thread that I do know

how to cook an artichoke properly

(a julia child recipe steered me right)

How to tie my shoes (velcro, you see..)

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago.

^^^ this. Same with Sandy Shaw.

Fay Fife of the Rezillos.

(i.e. it's a pun on "I am from the town of Fife, my good fellow" in broad scots)

What's the Adam Ant pun? Adam Ant = adamant? If so... pretty lame pun.

That's it.

xpost Tell that to Lai Mpun, the lead singer of Bangkok's Phleng Chat.

I am 33 and didn't know any of these things. Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

Same with Sandy Shaw.

i don't know how to explain it but i used to think chickens had a really weird way of "mating", something to do with the rooster's legs. (!!?!?) :)

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

"that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character."

^^^Dude, you beat me by a month. Thanks!

I once spent a half hour trying to eject a cd from a Mac before someone finally told me there's an eject button on the keyboard. I was going through all these crazy menus and preferences...

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

― filthy dylan, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 5:30 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

loooool one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory.

I think I've done that Mac eject button thing too :(

Pronounced lapels like 'labels' for years until corrected but happily don't dress well enough to use it often

My girlfriend was shocked to learn, at the age of 33, that a 'Flea Circus' is actually a rather charming mechanical toy, and is in no way operated by any parasitic insects.

Ismael, at the age of 32, is shocked to learn the same thing. This thread is getting embarrassing

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory

no but seriously, what is this about?

i mean i can see that there's rarely anything to size them against in the big white antarctic, but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

u could still play tag w/it tho

But you could make the same assumption with ostriches in the big yellow desert (or wherever they live), and in that case you'd be right!

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

aw no-one said 'where babies come from'

I've had a lot of experiences in my adult life with mispronouncing words I understood as part of written text, but hadn't heard aurally in the context of conversation etc. For example, I was well into my twenties before I knew the word "vehement" wasn't pronounced veh-hee-ment. I wish others would politely correct you when you do that instead of letting you blindly sound like an idiot.

I'm a bit like that, but now I'm in the habit of saying works incorrectly, I can't get out of it. Canal is not pronounced can-el, but there's fuck all I can do about it now.

^ This happens to me all the time too - so much so that I actually now find it quite amusing when I realise, midway through a sentence, that a word I've never heard before is looming at the end. I suppose that people who talk a lot, rather than reading, must find the same with spelling. It only annoys me when some moron uses it as an opportunity to score cheap points (sadly fairly often)

I was going to start a thread like this, but it was going to be more about 'life lessons' that took you forever to learn, rather than trivia.

Anyway it's taken me this long to fully realize how unreliable first impressions can be when it comes to people.

but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

haha

TAL have an episode on this in the "best of" section on their wesite. people who thought unicorns were real, etc., lots of awkward silences at cocktail parties: good stuff.

i like to tag birds. (runs)

There's a penguin here and he wants to say "you didn't touch me ner ner ner"

I thought penguins went "weh weh weh"

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

― Huey in Bristol (Huey in Melbourne), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you couldnt get me in the same room as a ouija board

I was about 35 when I figured out Open Sesame = Open Says Me.

i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

I just figured out, like 2 days ago, that the lyrics are "highway to the danger zone"

(until then, thought they were "I went to to the danger zone")

xp wow that is wild, TIL

i saw this commercial infinity times and this is how u say it no matter how u spell it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErWKoE07fVE

looking at long i sounds, ai jus actually told me that “elite” is pronounced with two long e’s. EE-LEET. i have never hears that except in like sportscasts about DEE-fense. i always think of it as eh-LEET.

Thanks to an old ILM post That Stuck In My Head, I now mentally pronounce shoegaze like it rhymes with Fugazi.

Lol if i ever have the need to say this word out loud i always use this pronouciation.

Pretty sure I say ayleet, although I don't write it with an é.

I have never pronounced the t in filet and I have never used the word fillet.

We speak of filet mignon, no t, and there is a business called Chick-Fil-A.

The first time I even heard someone pronounce the t in fillets was John McPhee reading his book about shad. Fwiw he's a lifelong resident of Princeton, New Jersey.

dad was a really great woodworker cabinetry guy and my only exposure to fillets is there. it’s fish?

And steak/beef.

Though apparently it can be any meat.

thanks to my career path I only pronounce elite as L33T

been craving a filet mignon since this topic came up but the steak sandwich I had for lunch would suffice

How do you pronounce the verb (to fillet a fish) in America?

I always said “fillay “

yeah, fill-ayy

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/McDonald%27s_Filet-O-Fish_sandwich_%281%29.jpg/250px-McDonald%27s_Filet-O-Fish_sandwich_%281%29.jpg

Fillay-O-Fish

xp, xp

that's insanity lads. insanity.

probably won't believe me, but if i heard somebody here pronounce fillet as "FILL-it" i would have to assume they were putting on airs

whatd you think youre better 'n me just cuz i say it franch?

and yet they scorn us for conceivably thinking of LJ as 'lewis'

and they put 'rafe' finest in the movies

'they'?

listen buck

have you ever read one of those really old English history books where they refer to the Sun King as Lewis XIV? lol

'they' = some of my very best friends, of course

I'm afraid that old joke about the fishmonger's daughter just wouldn't work in the US.

Another question for the Americans: if you "fillay" a fish, do you use a "fillaying" knife to do it?

No, I use a fillay knife for fillaying.

In ostraya we called that burger a “fillitafish”

realised this morning that bricks are ceramic. usually i just think of crockery, vases etc as ceramic but the humble brick is made the same way.

That's there is a fourth Mazzy Star album.

how do britishers say "filet mignon"?

Answered upthread:

you would say "fill-it mig-non" and if the waiter looks confused you order some lovely blood sausage instead

― . (jamiesummerz), Friday, November 14, 2025 11:40 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know what a filet mignon is or why i would order one

image search indicates that it's a chonky steak, not really into steak

don’t worry britishes if you get one just boil it like usual

Filet mignon is French, fillet is English, it's not a borrowed word.

So they're pronounced differently.

I mostly eat Chinese food but I know people who eat steaks in England and think they just have different cuts here (and don't boil them, we are well-known in France for roasting our beef)

it is true you are i believe v famous for roast beef, i do stand corrected

What Americans call a filet mignon is also not what a filet mignon actually is, discovered that searching for mentions of it on this thread.

i noted that they are different words in different languages upthread but look you can only do so much rly

how do britishers say "filet mignon"?

In the unlikely event I said it, it would be "fill-ay min-yon", but as Tom D said, it's not the same word.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hDmglcD_lA

what do you say when you fillet a turbot?

what do ye say when badgering a witness?

fillet is pronounced fillet

id love to blame stanlet tucci for this but ofc he is a symptom not a cause

that is not who I would have expected to post the McDonalds commercial and that brought me joy yesterday

Mine is chasm - thought it was pronounced like Chad.

Oh whoops, TIL etc. Thanks, Daniel_Rf!

Apropos, it seems no-one has ever googlably written "no dark, sour chasm in the classroom" on the internet before.

The words testes/testicles come from the same root as testify/testimony/testament, because in the ancient world, men would seal a pact or promise by grabbing each other's genitals.

This comes from Latin and the practice existed in the Roman Empire, but I learned it from the Old Testament while at a Bar Mitzvah this past weekend, so it was practice there too -- there are apparently multiple places where it says that someone put their hand under someone else's thigh to solidify a vow, and this is what is meant.

(NB sounds like the etymological connection is debated, but it's too good not to believe imho)

a bit like in the psalms when David describes God's love as being "balls deep"

*snort*

Am I the only person who had no idea that Will Geer (Grandpa Walton from The Waltons) was a full-on card-carrying Communist and a pal/roomie of Woody Guthrie?

Some of the most jarring discoveries of my life have learning that beloved TV actors (Normal Fell, Jack Klugman, Cindy Williams, etc) actually had lives before those dumb roles and sometimes did really amazing work in their early years

a bit like in the psalms when David describes God's love as being "balls deep"

― budo jeru, Wednesday, November 19, 2025 4:17 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is the kind of scripture i can get behind