# Stuff you were embarrassed that you didn't know **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 19, 2010, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206 "2010-11-19T06:42:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/141 "2010-11-24T14:46:41Z")
I say “nachos” like “NAH-cho’s” - rhyming with “macho”, I guess. The first syllable rhymes with saw or thaw, yes, but with a little less “long” on it. I don’t really know what you mean by “say the w” - I do and don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/142 "2010-11-24T15:11:16Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I say “nachos” like “NAH-cho’s” - rhyming with “macho”, I guess. The first syllable rhymes with saw or thaw, yes, but with a little less “long” on it. I don’t really know what you mean by “say the w” - I do and don’t. I’m guessing the confusion comes from regional dialects: some Americans pronounce “cot” and “caught” with the same vowel, and some don’t. To my ear, “thaw” and “thought” have the same sound, but I think Easterners would make a distinction. My own contribution: I didn’t have any idea what toilet paper was for until I was about 10. I don’t know how I missed that part of toilet training, especially since whenever I was slow to learn something, my dad would yell rhetorically, “Am I still gonna have to wipe your ass for you when you’re 21?” I guess I just thought it was an idiom. I was also really late to a basic religious literacy. I had the idea that Mary was God’s wife, and therefore some sort of goddess herself, until I heard Jesus Christ Superstar when I was in high school. More complex things like the Trinity I didn’t learn until I was 30, after graduate school. Note: I also had two years of Catholic high school, but by Grade 11 they assume you know the fundamentals. I can remember the revelation when I was 16 and realized I wasn’t Christian, not because of a well-reasoned atheism but because I had never internalized basic concepts like salvation and monotheism. ---
**Author:** ![mo50](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@mo50](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mo50)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/143 "2010-11-24T15:12:45Z")
> [@WOOKINPANUB](#): > > Regarding Ms. Nicks, I remember being about nine and looking at a rock magazine that had a pitcure of her and some record executive or whatever and I couldn’t grasp that her name was actually Stevie. I assumed it had to be a misprint. > > I think I have you all beat when I say as recently as six months ago I needed to use a neighbor’s cell phone and didn’t have a clue how to operate it. Talk about shame. I just got my first phone - a Tracfone to keep in my car - and I figured out how to make a call but beyond that, no clue. It apparently has some nifty stuff on it too, but I just can’t get into it. I’m the same, right down to the crappy Tracfone. (Though I did finally break down & get one a couple years ago after pressure from my GF, so you have me beat there). Don’t know how to text or store people’s numbers in the thing. Still have like a million little slips of paper w/ phone numbers on them I have to burrow through & find if I want to call somebody & don’t know the number by heart. Don’t have/know how to use a digital camera either, still using those throw aways. Pretty pathetic! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/144 "2010-11-24T15:17:21Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I say “nachos” like “NAH-cho’s” - rhyming with “macho”, I guess. The first syllable rhymes with saw or thaw, yes, but with a little less “long” on it. I don’t really know what you mean by “say the w” - I do and don’t. This is where regional pronunciation differences make it difficult for someone to say, “said like X, not Y” because someone else will pronounce those the same, etc. For me, what he was saying is similar to the difference in my pronunciation of Don versus Dawn. Dawn has a more pronounced ‘awww’ sound, where Don is more ‘ahhh’\*. Another example of this is cot versus caught. So the other guy saying he’d pronounce nachos as “naw-chos” sounds like if I pronounced ‘Don’ or ‘cot’ with a ‘w’. It’d sound really weird to me. - When I worked in corporate IT, it threw me when I called a California location where Don and Dawn are homonyms! ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/145 "2010-11-24T15:42:38Z")
> [@mo50](#): > > I’m the same, right down to the crappy Tracfone. (Though I did finally break down & get one a couple years ago after pressure from my GF, so you have me beat there). Don’t know how to text or store people’s numbers in the thing. Still have like a million little slips of paper w/ phone numbers on them I have to burrow through & find if I want to call somebody & don’t know the number by heart. > Don’t have/know how to use a digital camera either, still using those throw aways. > > Pretty pathetic! :smack: Oh yeah, same here with the camera thing. _Literally_ the very first time I’d ever held one in my hand was when I was working for a newspaper (five or six years ago) and I had to go out and photograph a customer for an ad I was putting together. I had to kind of bluff my way into getting a co-worker to show me how to use it and I was as nervous as a cat when I got to the client’s office. In truth, they’re not that complex and I was able to get a decent shot but to this day I will not volunteer to take someone’s picture, be they a stranger / tourist or the person I’m with at the time. And I too still use the throw aways. I are scared of technology:( ---
**Author:** ![rostfrei](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7bcc69/32.png) [@rostfrei](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rostfrei)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/146 "2010-11-24T15:58:56Z")
> [@Nobody](#): > > I was a teenager hanging out with a friend watching some other guys play pool. One of them kept talking to the other constantly calling him holmes. I didn’t realize it was just something you called somebody, I thought that was his actual name :o. The next I was talking to my friend on the phone and I mentioned one of the guys playing pool, “I can’t think of his name, although I think his last name was holmes.” :smack: > > What was worse was that the next day my friend was using the term, so he knew what it meant but didn’t tell me about it making me feel like a fool when I realized it wasn’t an actual name. There have been threads about this term before. I seem to remember that it’s actually a variation of “homey” or “homeboy”. Therefore, technically it’s “homes”, not “holmes”. ---
**Author:** ![jali](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecae2f/32.png) [@jali](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jali)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/147 "2010-11-24T16:03:33Z")
> [@flight](#): > > Sorry to bring you down, but you still don’t get it. They aren’t saying Holmes, they are saying Homes, as in short for Homie or Home Boy, a term for friend. When I was in eight grade the saying was, “Yo! Holmes”. We were cracking on the kid, not calling them Homey. Just like. “No shit Sherlock.” 1. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/148 "2010-11-24T21:20:56Z")
> [@rostfrei](#): > > There have been threads about this term before. I seem to remember that it’s actually a variation of “homey” or “homeboy”. Therefore, technically it’s “homes”, not “holmes”. See posts 121 and 122. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2010, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/149 "2010-11-25T00:47:49Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > [QUOTE=Askance] > It was only this year that, courtesy of The Dope, I discovered that nachos is the plural of nacho and so is pronounced “natch-oze” not “na-choss”. So much for my years of ‘correcting’ people on this matter … Wait—“natch” to rhyme with “catch” or “snatch”?? [/QUOTE] Erm, yes. All three of those words rhyme perfectly, to me. “natchoze” and “nachoze” are also identical to me. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2010, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/150 "2010-11-25T03:04:08Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > My own contribution: I didn’t have any idea what toilet paper was for until I was about 10. I don’t know how I missed that part of toilet training, especially since whenever I was slow to learn something, my dad would yell rhetorically, “Am I still gonna have to wipe your ass for you when you’re 21?” I guess I just thought it was an idiom. So you just… went around dirty? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2010, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/151 "2010-11-25T03:12:42Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > So you just… went around dirty? I guess. I don’t remember it being a problem, but kids can turn a blind eye to all sorts of disgusting, can’t they? I did wear underwear, bathe frequently, and live in an otherwise sanitary environment. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2010, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/152 "2010-11-25T03:52:33Z")
I was in my 40’s before I ever heard of a carpenter bee. I was building a garage and found 3 perfectly drilled holes in the wood. Who goes around drilling vertical holes in stuff? Then I saw what looked like a bumble bee fly out of one of the holes. It was like seeing a UFO. I just stood there and looked at it in confusion. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2010, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/153 "2010-11-25T04:26:14Z")
OK, kind of silly, but a few weeks ago, maybe about a month ago, I was watching **The Soup** and Joel McHale talked about a singer I never heard of before. He said her name as “K. E. Dollar Sign H. A.” I’m thinking to myself, “I wonder how that’s pronounced.” :smack: A week or so later I hear an ad for some music and they mention an artist I’ve never heard of named Kesha. I look at the TV and see she spells it Ke$ha. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2010, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206/154 "2010-11-25T04:28:04Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Erm, yes. All three of those words rhyme perfectly, to me. > > “natchoze” and “nachoze” are also identical to me. Well, I won’t tell you that’s _wrong_, because it fits in perfectly with my impression of how Commonwealth English-speakers pronounce Spanish, but American English speakers (my guess is Canadians, too) would pronounce that a as one would the a in _farm_. My guess is that if you started doing that in Australia, though, it would get you some weird looks. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-were-embarrassed-that-you-didnt-know/561206.md?page=7)