As the title says, what common misconceptions are out there? My suggestions.
The Luddites, its easy for us to look back and roll our eyes at them for trying to halt the inevitable tide of progress, and yes while there is an element of truth to that the advent of machinery and automation really was taking away their livelihoods and it wasn’t irrational to fight against it. Although from our historical perspective their attempts were obviously doomed.
King Canute ordering back the tide, commonly related as a tale of hubris it actually has events backwards, he was making the point that royalty does not have unlimited power or as the wikipedia article puts it: “that he has no control over the elements (the incoming tide), explaining that secular power is vain compared to the supreme power of God.”
The Island of Dr Moreau, its actually a story about turning animals into people and not people into animals. The Simpson’s episode probably didn’t help in this respect.
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” —It was originally a metaphor for being expected to do something impossible —you can’t pull yourself up by pulling on your bootstraps.
A random selection of low hanging fruit:
Frankenstein was the monster.
Vaccinations cause autism, and an infinite variety of other medical woo.
Virtually any diet advice other than: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
That evolution involves one organism changing into another.
That evolution by natural selection is a random process.
MSG causes headaches.
An undercover cop must identify himself truthfully when asked.
That black holes suck objects in like vacuum cleaners.
A duck’s quack has no echo.
That a scientific “theory” means an unproven or untested hypothesis.
That eating before swimming is dangerous.
That we only use some small proportion of our mental capacity.
A couple of more interesting ones:
That there was once a word spelled or pronounced “ye” that meant “the” in old English.
(Nope. Ludd was a legendary figure who supposedly lived several decades before the Luddites were active. It’s doubtful if he existed at all.)
The Luddites wore a type of clog called a sabot. They would damage the machinery by throwing their clogs into the works. This was known as sabotage, and the people doing it were saboteurs.
(Nope. The word sabotagedoes derive from the clogs. But the original implication was clumsiness rather than deliberate damage. It is unconnected with the Luddites, and is unattested in English before about 1907.)
Popular belief: The Luddites were led by Nedd Ludd.
(Nope. Luddwas a legendary figure who supposedly lived several decades before the Luddites were active. It’s doubtful if he existed at all.)
**Poppular belief: The Luddites wore a type of clog called a sabot. They would damage the machinery by throwing their clogs into the works. This was known as sabotage, and the people doing it were saboteurs. **
(Nope. The word sabotagedoes derive from the clogs. But the original implication was clumsiness rather than deliberate damage. It is unconnected with the Luddites, and is unattested in English before about 1907.)
My favorite misconception is the belief that “The immaculate conception” refers to Jesus being conceived by Mary without benefit of a physical father. The actual conception being referred to is the conception of Mary by her own mother without original sin, thus creating the perfect vessel for Jesus to be conceived in later.
The white “smoke” you see from a teapot, iron, etc. is not steam. Steam, by definition, is invisible. What you’re seeing is a mist.
Many people believe the way to lose weight is to “hit the gym.” But for most people, exercise won’t have much of an impact on weight.
Water does not freeze at exactly 0 °C.
The explanation of how a plane flies often goes like this: “Due to Bernoulli’s Principle, the air over the top of the wing has lower pressure (due to the longer path) than the bottom of the wing. This pressure difference is what keeps the plane in the air.” The last sentence is incorrect.
It’s commonly believed gold is the best electrical conductor. But silver and copper have higher conductivity values than gold.
Butterfly larvae don’t spin silken cocoons, but moth larvae do.
Larvae is pronounce lar-vee. All -ae plurals in English are properly pronounced -ee for the last syllable.
It’s called ‘tough love’, NOT because it’s tough on the kid/Addict but because it’s incredibly tough to get an enabler to stop what they are doing. Mostly because what they are doing is for their own benefit.
