# Have you ever got into trouble because you didn't know what a word meant?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [April 16, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397 "2016-04-16T19:46:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Dunmurry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunmurry)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/1 "2016-04-16T19:46:13Z")
Hand out here typing but I was wondering as I sit here if any of you have ever got into trouble because you didn’t know what a word meant. It reminds me of a joke an Irish joke if it makes any difference someone goes to a house who is not from Ireland and sees these people called the Murphys sitting on the floor dirty washing potatoes “Oh yes we’re bogging” they say and then he goes to another house and sees some other people sitting on the floor dirty washing potatoes and he says “You’re like the Murphys you’re bogging” but bogging doesn’t mean washing potatoes it means dirty like in a bog. So I was wondering if you ever had problems in a new area because you didn’t know what a word meant and things like this? Is there anyone here who had problems in a new area now and can tell me more about these things now then?
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### Author:  [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2016, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/2 "2016-04-16T21:46:15Z")
Your story reminded me of that time I was hiking through an uncharted portion of the Amazon basin. I’d exhausted my food and water and was starving. I fainted from deprivation, and when I awoke I found myself surrounded by a tribe of cannibals, all with huge loin-cloths that couldn’t hide their huge packages. I was taken to the village, given food and water, and then brought before the chieftain. The chief thundered: "Well, whitey man. We are going to give you choice. You can either be roasted and eaten alive or experience Unga Bunga.”
“Death or Unga Bunga! Death or Unga Bunga!” they all chanted.
I was pretty out of it, but I knew I didn’t want to die. So I chose Unga Bunga. All the men were so happy that I realized I’d missed an important fact. So I asked what Unga Bunga was. “It be taking it in the back-end by all members of the tribe, whitey man,” the chief replied… with a huge grin.
Well, I bent over a log and all the men lined up behind me. But after a couple of hours I was free to go. Walking a bit bow-legged, I limped off into the rainforest. But I was still lost, still no food, no water.
I fainted again from deprivation, and when I awoke this time I found myself surrounded by another tribe of cannibals, all with huge loin-cloths that couldn’t hide their even huger packages.
Again I was given the choice: “Death or Unga Bunga! Death or Unga Bunga!” they all chanted. And again, after much consideration, I chose Unga Bunga. All night long the cannibals had their way with me, and in the morning I was free to go.
The next day I fainted AGAIN and was AGAIN taken capture, this time by a tribe with loin cloths that touched the ground. And AGAIN I was given the choice: “Death or Unga Bunga! Death or Unga Bunga!” went the chant.
Well, I decided that I’d had enough! I said to the chief: “Go ahead. Burn me, eat me. I’m ready to go. I CHOOSE DEATH!"
The chief, much impressed by my bravery, replied: “All right, whitey man. DEATH… BY UNGA BUNGA!"
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### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2016, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/3 "2016-04-16T22:38:39Z")
First time I got stopped by a southern redneck cop, and he asked me “Where ya started?”. I has no idea of the meaning of that common (at the time) idiom, and he thought I was being a smart ass when I told him my departure point, not the destination that the expression meant to request.
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### Author:  [@janis\_and\_c0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janis_and_c0)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2016, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/4 "2016-04-16T23:38:13Z")
But officer, the sign says fine for parking!!
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### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/5 "2016-04-17T00:38:59Z")
Ever drive by a motel with a sign “Free Breakfast” and go in and help yourself to the waffle-maker?
I asked a lawyer friend about that once, she said a judge would probably invoke the “reasonable person” doctrine, and rule that a reasonable person wold understand the tacit limitations on the offer.
There is a cable channel in most cities that runs 24 hours of houses for sale, often showing a panel depicting a glamor shot of a pretty sales agent, and her direct personal phone number. I wonder if they ever get serious calls from earnest young men newly immigrated into the western world, who think it is a dating site.
A girl from South America told me shortly after she arrived in a US college, she went by a shop with a sign up that “Skirts 50c, Dreses $1” and went in and started pawing through the rack of hangers. She was embarrassed to find out that it was a dry cleaner.
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### Author:  [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/6 "2016-04-17T01:14:43Z")
A friend of mine was telling me when she first met her husband, who happens to be German, he jokingly told her he was a kraut. Fast forward a few days later, she at at a party introducing her new man to her friends. Where upon she proudly stated he was a kraut.
He had to pull her aside and explain to her that’s not a word you actually want to use.
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### Author:  [@Cub\_Mistress](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cub_Mistress)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/7 "2016-04-17T01:41:45Z")
One of my daughter’s friends moved to rural Tennessee from California and picked up the habit of using the casual insult of “heifer” among her friends. When she discovered the word means “unbred cow” she was horrified and apologized for calling her friends cows.
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/8 "2016-04-17T03:06:18Z")
I had this friend who complained about all the shit she had to do to her hair, and eventually she said she was just going to let it go nappy, which I took to mean natural, i.e., an Afro, as we called 'em at the time. So I said yeah, let it go nappy, and she did, and it looked fine.
Some years later I had a coworker who bitched and moaned about all the shit she had to do to her hair and so I said, “Why not just let it go nappy?” She got all outraged as if I’d insulted her, but on the other hand, I didn’t mean it as an insult–we cleared that up–and so not really all that much trouble. On the other hand, by then natural was not the style anymore.
I did get in a certain amount of trouble as a kid for using words I’d read, which were not in my Dictionary for Boys and Girls. “Mom, what’s a whore?” “Where did you hear that?” (Obviously I had not heard it, or I would have pronounced it right.) “Uh, Gone With the Wind.” “You shouldn’t be reading that.” GWTW disappears, only to reappear packed in tight on the top shelf. “Mom, what’s a cunt?” [Mom faints.] And so on.
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/9 "2016-04-17T03:08:16Z")
> [@Cub\_Mistress](#):
>
> One of my daughter’s friends moved to rural Tennessee from California and picked up the habit of using the casual insult of “heifer” among her friends. When she discovered the word means “unbred cow” she was horrified and apologized for calling her friends cows.
A coworker of mine thought one of her employees was calling her “heifer,” but he was in fact calling her “jefe” as she was his boss.
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### Author:  [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/10 "2016-04-17T03:15:28Z")
Years ago, I heard my brother refer to someone as “light in the loafers.” I thought it just meant “eccentric” or “crazy”.
So I used that new-found phrase at the next opportunity. And that’s how I accidentally started a rumor that one of my coworkers was gay.
In my defense, this was 20 years ago. And I was an idiot.
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/11 "2016-04-17T05:59:01Z")
@ **Hilarity N. Suze** : How did you pronounce “whore”?
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/12 "2016-04-17T06:57:09Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#):
>
> A coworker of mine thought one of her employees was calling her “heifer,” but he was in fact calling her “jefe” as she was his boss.
Should be _jefa_, which sounds even more like heifer…
Back when I was in kindergarten I refered to a smart toddler as “a smart dwarf” - I knew the word to mean “small person”, never thought it could be offensive or mean anything regarding development. The older kids called us kindergartners “the dwarves” all the time and nobody had made any kind of fuss about it. His mother got mad, I had to apologize profusely, kept getting scourged verbally about it for what seemed like an eternity and eventually got an explanation. Eventually.
I see similar situations quite frequently in children that age: only because the child knows a word that doesn’t mean they know all its possible meanings and implications. Lots of grownups can’t make the distinction and get mad at a kid who didn’t mean anything bad.
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### Author:  [@Folacin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folacin)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/13 "2016-04-17T11:49:02Z")
As a child, I got really mad at a cousin (I’m going to guess we were 8 or 9), and called him a homosexual. I had no idea what it meant - I must have read it in a book somewhere and from context knew it was an insult (this would be the 1960’s).
NTTAWTT, but Steve is apparently not a homosexual - married (twice) with children (twice).
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/14 "2016-04-17T15:10:44Z")
> [@Senegoid](#):
>
> @ **Hilarity N. Suze** : How did you pronounce “whore”?
You know how you don’t really pronounce the W when you say “who” and you do when you say “whoa”? I went the “whoa” direction.
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### Author:  [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/15 "2016-04-17T19:34:19Z")
At the kangaroo exhibit at the Indianapolis Zoo when I was four or five, I read the plaque on the enclosure’s railing, which read “Vanishing Animal,” which in this case meant “endangered species”. I started staring at the kangaroo very intently, and Mom asked me what I was doing. Quite earnestly, I explained that I was waiting for it to disappear. I didn’t get in trouble, of course, and I got full points for knowing the meaning of the word. But I have never lived it down, thirty years later.
Something that I _did_ get in trouble for, though: Around the same time, a new Kroger store opened in my neighborhood. In the vestibule was a Keebler display which included the elves’ iconic tree, upon which cookies were “growing”. Later, in class, our teacher asked us what kinds of foods grow on trees. After the usual responses (apples, et cetera), I piped in with “cookies”, and got sent to the corner for goofing off. Assholes.
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### Author:  [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/16 "2016-04-17T20:34:46Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#):
>
> I did get in a certain amount of trouble as a kid for using words I’d read, which were not in my Dictionary for Boys and Girls. “Mom, what’s a whore?” “Where did you hear that?” (Obviously I had not heard it, or I would have pronounced it right.) “Uh, Gone With the Wind.” “You shouldn’t be reading that.” GWTW disappears, only to reappear packed in tight on the top shelf. “Mom, what’s a cunt?” [Mom faints.] And so on.
I discovered calling my brother a bastard was a rally bad thing to do when I did it in front of my mom. In my defense, though I knew it was a bad word, I saw it on a romance book title (The Bastards) at the supermarket and figured it couldn’t be _that_ bad.
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### Author:  [@Cub\_Mistress](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cub_Mistress)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2016, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/17 "2016-04-17T21:11:17Z")
Ah, yes. Words you saw out of any context that would help you figure it out. Some wit wrote Fuck Mr. (elementary school Principal) on a sidewalk. I asked my mother what that meant. Hilarity did NOT ensue.
I did try to look it up in the big dictionary, but it wasn’t there!
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### Author:  [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2016, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/18 "2016-04-18T03:12:19Z")
> [@Senegoid](#):
>
> @ **Hilarity N. Suze** : How did you pronounce “whore”?
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#):
>
> You know how you don’t really pronounce the W when you say “who” and you do when you say “whoa”? I went the “whoa” direction.
Whore /
Hunghh! Good god y’all /
What is it good for? /
Absolutely Nuthin’…
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2016, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/19 "2016-04-18T03:39:21Z")
When I was very young, we had some neighbors who were rather unpleasant and lived in a decrepit house. My parents generally referred to them as “low lifes”.
My parents also had some friends who were, in a word, poor. They were very kind people but their house was not as nice as ours. I learned one day that “low life” is not a synonym for “poor”. Also that it’s bad form to call someone poor in the first place.
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### Author:  [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2016, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-got-into-trouble-because-you-didnt-know-what-a-word-meant/752397/20 "2016-04-18T10:51:39Z")
When I spent a summer in Canada as an exchange student, I once went to an open-air party where there was a big sign that read “Don’t be an _unknown word which I parsed as [ash-ole]_”, don’t drink and drive". I turned to one of the cool guys who was there and, just as I asking him what the word meant, I had an epiphany and stopped mid-sentence. “Never mind”, I blurted out.
During the same stay, I was playfully trading mild insults with the girl in whose family I was living one afternoon when I used the word: “faggot”, which I had just read in some **Guns N’ Roses** lyrics. She was not amused.
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