Things you were shockingly old when you learned

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.

international harvester's main claim to fame is tractors:

makes sense. you've heard of farm-to-table? this is tractor-to-fridge!

fiance = man
fiancee = woman

I didn't even notice that they were two different words

blond/blonde
divorce-with-accent-mark/divorcee

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

Thanx, Poo! Whew! I wasn't praying there wasn't some sort of ridiculously common tool called a sandishaw.

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

How shockingly old are you when you now learn that Fife isn't a town?

On the subject of pun-based singer names, Manda Rin dawned on me about six years after I first heard of her. I just thought it was a couple of words, it never occurred to me to say it out loud, or look at the actual two words written down in close proximity.

what about ari up?

^^ could not make sense of that one until JUST RIGHT NOW

Wait, what is the Ari Up pun?

hurry up?

Aye, in Cockney/estuary English. That's how I've always read it anyway.

I was about 30 before I realised Adam Ant was a pun, and about 36 before I realised Perry Farrell was also a pun.

Adam Ant I realised earlier this year, aged 23. Perry Farrell, I got... right now.

I've known about three of the things mentioned so far. I'm especially clueless when it comes to food. I learned what fondue was a couple of months ago when I didn't know how to draw it in a game of Cranium, which resulted in a lot of disbelieving laughter heading my way.

Perry Farrell ... holee shit. How did that ever escape my notice!?

I remember reading Liz Fraser of the Cocteaus saying she used to believe that goosebump/shiver sensation was her blood changing direction cause that's what someone told her as a kid. I think she believed it right into her teens.

Driving on the I-90 west near Albany a few years ago, I read one of the big green signs over the highway. I turned to my wife and said, "I love the name of that town: 'Sheh-neck-ta-dee'...."

She promptly clued me in to the correct pronunciation.

Shit, never realised about Perry Farrell. Or the fiance/fiancee thing---I thought they were jsut different attempts to Englishise the same French word without having to use an accent mark. I'm an editor, and have a sinking feeling I may have "corrected" this in other people's work more than once. Fuck.

It was only last year that I realised Iggy Pop was a pun! For someone who likes to make a lot of lame puns myself, it's pretty shameful.

Iggy Pop? I don't get it!

I was just kidding.