Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Same with Sandy Shaw.

Ok I sounded this out several times in several different ways and I still don't get how this is a pun. Help?

I think that 'Shaw' is meant to sound like 'shore' - I don't hear it either

Sandy Shore.

Shaw is pronounced exactly the same as Shore, in England.

hows it pron in USA?

Well I guess it must be different, if people are having problems hearing it? Dunno.

I didn't even know it was her real name, tho.

wasn't, rather

I knew someone who, if my friend is to believed, is said to have uttered at age 18 "wait, you can't get pregnant if your clothes are on, right" while making out.

'Shore' rhymes with 'oar'. 'Shaw' is the same as the first three letters in 'shopping' xp

i'm loving this thread. so many discoveries!

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

― Øystein, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

http://www.noonco.com/flea/movie.htm

My flabber hasn't been gasted quite like this in a long time :-/

xp I only got that Sandie Shaw pun because I once attended a seminar about legal practice given by an English professor who made a big thing out of the difference between 'law' and 'lore'. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about

Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

I know, right?!!??!

i too only figured out lipps, inc. lately. also, fear's lee ving. it never occurred to me until i was driving in the car one day and bam.

I just now got Lipps, Inc. I say in my head "Lipps Incorporated" whenever I read that.

I was pretty close to thirty when I was told that "prevalent" is not pronounced pree-VAY-lent. I liked my version better. "The PREE-VAY-LENT opinion in this country is that Barack Obama will be a force of change."

I didn't realize until sometime in my sophomore year of high school that being forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson (Focus on the Family) every morning on the way to school was completely fucked up. My dad used to drive me to school everyday for years, and that shit was always on the radio.

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

― Cittaslow Mazza (blueski), Wednesday, 12 November 2008"

haha yes, i thought it must be turkish

I was pretty close to thirty when I was told that "prevalent" is not pronounced pree-VAY-lent.

probably some slippage with "prevailing" no?

I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, probably.

re HAZCHEM, we have HAZMAT around here, and i only figured it out in recent times

pleasant plains, ai lien has a coworker who is black and who claims that the black community calls it lipps incorporated. he was unmoved when she told him about the pun.

I probably would have "gotten" Lipps Inc sooner had I actually heard someone utter their name out loud. They tend not to be talked about a lot, shockingly.

(i never got it until right now)

that 'broadway' was shorthand for a bunch of separately owned theaters rather than a single entity like disneyland or something

that causal ≠ casual

I DID NOT KNOW THAT ABOUT OLIVES

omg

I mean, even Kids Incorporated was Kids Incorporated. Is Public Image, Ltd also some sort of pun I'm not getting?

there is quite a lot of stuff on here that i didn't know...

re mispronouncing words: this happens to me A LOT. i've always been a big reader, but rarely heard many of the 'big' words i encountered spoken out loud (eg. my mum would never even use the word 'prevalent'). it is quite embarrassing to discover you have been saying a word wrong forever!

i was probably in my late teens before i found out that not every adult has false teeth (i blame this on the fact that every adult member of my family had them).

I was pretty close to thirty when I was told that "prevalent" is not pronounced pree-VAY-lent.

Easily confused with "covalent", IMO.

Also, this just came up in convo recently: I was 22 or 23 before I was told that "passing" is an accepted term for a non-white person who can "pass" for white in public. I queried it in a manuscript as being insufficiently explained, and I was told, "Uh, no. That's, like...a thing. That everyone but you already knows." Ouch. Thanks, boss.

I learned about that phrase during an interview Ed Bradley conducted with Lena Horne.

that you can just lift the silverware thing right out of the dishwasher and carry it over to the silverware drawer

James Dobson raped me.

btw i'm pretty sure adam ant took his name from the british brand of urinals

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/28/49309263_4de15ee0ee.jpg?v=0

Lucky he didn't decide to call himself Armitage Shanks.

that international harvester was a brand of refrigerator and not just the name of a swedish prog band:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/96/234540591_d6ed366755.jpg

i still say preevaylent and hyperbowl

International Harvester of Sorrow

how to pronounce "synecdoche" (but i learned it well before the movie was even in development, nyeh nyeh)

oh come on, shouldn't this be more basic stuff people take for granted by the time they're adults? most people i know don't know how to pronounce synecdoche, or what it means.

the truth about santa claus. being a rapist that is.

that lamb and sheep are the same species

ok looking upthread i just realized my santa=rapist joke is like the second joke involving rape on this thread. gross.

Things you were shockingly old when you learned: i'm a douchebag

That "quantum" is also a noun

international harvester's main claim to fame is tractors:

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/media/machines0201.jpg

but i'd be all over an IH fridge

Nabisco: I shall offer to solace (transitive verb) you kindly upon your troubled realization.

He's lucky you didn't offer to thunderball it...

When comedians are guests on talk shows they are just doing their routines and not having funny conversations off the cuff

I can (and will) thunderball solace.

pronunciation: I thought "chitin" rhymed with "kitten" for most of my life.

not pronunciation: don't know an exact age for this one, but for several years after reaching sexual maturity, I was under the impression that the vagina and urethra were two basically identical, indistinguishable holes, with the hapless male forced to pick one at random and start plugging away. astute readers may be able to use this information to deduce something about my sexual activity during this time period.