A couple months ago I laughed myself silly at a friend who hadn’t realised until that moment that cobwebs are the same as spider webs.
‘But I thought cobwebs were just build up of dust and crap in the corners of the room! They’re spider webs?!?’
Something to do with cobwebs being inside and spider webs being outside. Watching the moment of realisation dawn on his face was priceless!
No kidding…huh
I’m sure there’ll be more in this thread. For instance I’d also assumed Arby’s refered to Roast Beef
Well, I just learned this!
You think that’s bad? It took me until a couple of years ago to realize that Rabbit was supposed to be male.
My wife thinks this. I have tried to convince her of the truth, but she doesn’t want to hear that at all.
Speaking of sports teams, it was years before I realized the University of Connecticut’s teams were the “Yukon Huskies.” I heard the phrase “Yukon Huskies” mentioned on sports reports about a thousand times before it dawned on me they were actually talking about the “UConn Huskies.” :smack:
Maybe it refers to “Bust Top”.
It does.
I know that the chain is now claiming that it really stands for something else, but “RB”, pronounced “Arby”, used to be standard slang/designation for a Roast Beef sandwich in eateries. Even if Arby’s is completely on the level (which I doubt), they were definitely influenced by that common and ubiquitous usage.
This one is embarrassing to have to post but the Kay Jewelers commercial that goes “Every kiss begins with Kay” only recently dawned on my granddaughter who is now in college. That priceless expression change mentioned above had to be the highlight of the day for me.
It is really amusing to find the origins or etymologies of slang words and expressions. I enjoy reading the dictionary for said amusement and have several books devoted to catch phrases and slang that are packed with things like this.
One of the things I will do to words, in addition to the anagramming, is to say them backwards or the way they’re misspelled on signs (or when the letter for the sign wasn’t available and they used another one upside down).
Examples:
Kroger is Regork
Big Star (erstwhile local supermarket) is Big Rats
Car Mash (they must have lost their W)
Another interesting bit of trivia - the largest Arby’s franchiser was (at one time anyway) a company called “Sybra”. Sybra is “Arby’s” spelled backwards.
Not quite as obvious to those of us on this side of the pond, but it finally occurred to me one day that “Eeyore” is the Brit speak equivalent of “hee-haw”.
:smack:
My boyfriend does commercials for the local ballet company. I have lived here all my life, hearing their advertisements and such. Their phone number is something - 2222.
He just realized a few months ago and had to tell me - tutu tutu!
:smack:
Wonder what they say at the end of the ballet version of Julius Caesar
I just realized last week that the Aldi’s food store logo actually has a portion of a capital “A” in it and isn’t just some random design.
Bibby
We now return you to your reggggguuuularly scheduled thread …
So, is there a long line to get into the OpalCat fan club?
I’ve seen the movie “This is Spinal Tap” about 20 times. I thought I must have caught every joke/pun/reference. During the last viewing a couple years ago, they mention a music festival on the “Isle of Lucy.” Which I suddenly realized is an homage to “I Love Lucy.”
I had this realization too about a month ago. I got up one morning with the “Every kiss begins with Kay” jingle on constant loop in my brain, when it suddenly dawned on me that indeed every kiss begins with “k”. :smack: I was going to start a thread on it, but didn’t want to advertise my stupidity.
Ditto that. :smack: :smack:
Don’t feel too bad - to my knowledge, our boy Mike basically took a big piece of marble that had a flaw in its shape but was huge and of high quality otherwise and boasted that he could make something with it, so Florence let him have it. He figured out that a young man would fit in that shape - and I suspect only then figured out which young man he would craft. Back in the day, sometimes artists wanted to paint, sculpt, etc. a certain image - but with religious restrictions, they had to stay within what was “okay” - I suspect that’s why St. Sebastian got painted a lot - a man stripped naked and tied to a tree (okay, and pierced with arrows) was an okay way to paint a naked man…I seem to recall that that is what happened here with Mike and the Marble…and his vision of a nude young man (not that Michaelangelo had any issues with sculpting nude young men… 
)
For my entry on this - for the longest time, I didn’t realize that there wasn’t a word “fernanzer” - as in “he wouldn’t take no fernanzer” - well, gosh, who would? 
I can’t recall how I came to realize it was “he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer…” but it was a :smack: moment for me…