I mentioned this in another thread in Cafe Society, but here it is again. I noticed that On Broadway theatres gave out Tony awards, but Off Broadway theatres handed out Obie awards. I wondered if O B were a famous actor, producer, etc who the awards were named after, but I finally figured out that Obie was short for Off Broadway. Only took me about 20 years.
“Summer of '69” works just as well without the apostrophe.
I was an ambitious reader as a child, taking on quite a few books that were out of my league. As a result there were several words that aren’t pronounced like they are spelled that I never made the connection between. For example, it probably wasn’t until I was 13 or so that I realized that “jeneer” and genre were the same thing, that “Puhmonia” and Pneumonia aren’t two different illnesses, and that the “Nazzees” and the Nazis were the same people.
On the Winnie-the-Pooh theme, I only just recently realized that Owl and Rabbit are a real owl and rabbit. (Not stuffed like the other animals.)
Ah, I had gadget and gad-get.
You win.
Mine was the moment of dawning light when I realized that “epi-faney” and epiphany were the same.
You had an epiphany about the word “epiphany”?
This took me a long time … about an eon :eek:
Yes. I was just trying to phrase it without actually using the word.
I didn’t just get this one, but it was definitely obvious. There’s a news show on Louisiana public television called Louisiana: The State We’re In. One day, it aired after something else my mother and I were watching on PBS. “Well, duh,” I snickered, “of course Louisiana is the state we’re in!” When Mom finished laughing five minutes later, she pointed out that “the state we’re in” has another meaning.
ETA: I think I was in college when this happened. Possibly late high school, but definitely old enough to know better.
I think that **Hal **would like all of these.
Plus, perhaps, Embraceable Ewe.
After watching the Wizard of Oz countless times - first the yearly broadcast on network, then weekly viewing on VHS with TheKid when she was little - I was 30 beofre I realized the farmhands were the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man.
Duh.
In fairness, I came into this movie after the opening scenes and thought his name was NEIL the entire movie.
There’s an old standard But Not For Me that’s one of those “list songs” of things that are not for the person doing the singing. At some point “knot” gets mentioned in the context of “wedding knot” and then it’s said (paraphrasing), “but there’s no knot for me” (or similar – I could go find the lyrics, but that’s not the point). It took me years to get the message. Before that I just thought it was stupid.
And then you’d wonder about his LINE?
On the word theme, I too was embarrassingly old before I realized that the word “eunuch” I’d seen in print and a “unick” that meant a castrated man were the same thing. :smack: I mean, geez, what on earth did I think a eunuch was when I read it? (I think, a slave, which is what they generally were.)
Well, I hadn’t realized I had missed the first 10 minutes of the flick and was sitting in a hospital ICU waiting room’s tv watching the missing first minutes going,
" They made another MATRIX that fast? and then " Oh, his name is NEO."
I only figured out in the last 5 years that Y.M.C.A was a gay oriented song. I never paid attention to the lyrics when I was a lass. It was all about the cowboy. That tall hot looking gay cowboy.
And to think how long it took for Brokeback Mountain to arrive.