# Totally wrong stuff you believed to an embarrassingly advanced age **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 18, 2007, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477 "2007-06-18T16:42:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/201 "2007-06-20T02:44:51Z")
[QUOTE=Leaper] I had no idea until this thread that people actually thought that pineapples grew on trees. 😃 [/QUOTE] Ditto. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/202 "2007-06-20T03:57:44Z")
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat] No, **robardin** had it quite right, according to the current edition of _Webster’s Universal College Dictionary_ in my store. And my _American Heritage Dictionary_ lists _only_ PRIM-mer, with no mention of PRY-mer. Were you, perhaps, looking at the word that’s spelled the same but refers to igniters for explosives? It’s an abbreviation for the word “pound.” Used frequently in old dry goods stores and general stores (as in “5# sacks of sugar”). [/QUOTE] By golly, you’re right! See [here.](http://www.bartleby.com/61/87/P0558700.html) Until now, I’d always thought it was a long I sound. ---
**Author:** ![MerryMagdalen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@MerryMagdalen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MerryMagdalen)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/203 "2007-06-20T04:09:29Z")
It wasn’t until about six months ago that I realized that [Pete Seeger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger) and [Bob Seger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Seger) are two different people. That made the whole “Electric Dylan controversy” a lot less confusing. I would ask myself, “Why would a man so bothered by Bob Dylan go on to record ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’?” Now, it all makes sense. I’m 30. ---
**Author:** ![Bootis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e8c25b/32.png) [@Bootis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootis)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/204 "2007-06-20T05:32:13Z")
[QUOTE=DeadlyAccurate] Up until [today](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8694833&postcount=131) I believed I wasn’t invisible on message boards. [/QUOTE] Huh? Anyways, I’ve always known flaccid was pronounced “flacksid” and that “flassid” is incorrect, but I always thought it was spelled F-L-A-X-S-E-E-D :eek: ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/205 "2007-06-20T07:22:52Z")
I’ve NEVER heard flaccid pronounced any way other than “flas-id.” Some people pronounce it like there’s an ‘x’ in there? Seriously? ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/206 "2007-06-20T07:38:29Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > No, robardin had it quite right, according to the current edition of Webster’s Universal College Dictionary in my store. And my American Heritage Dictionary lists _only_ PRIM-mer, with no mention of PRY-mer. Were you, perhaps, looking at the word that’s spelled the same but refers to igniters for explosives? [No](http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=primer). “Primmer” is a British pronunciation. It may hold more sway in the US than “petrol”, but the idea that you’re “wrong” for pronouncing the word in a way that’s intuitive to American listeners and clearly understood by everyone with any functional comprehension of the English language, is preposterous. It’s yet another example of the ridiculous British assertion that “the Queen’s English” is the superior form, aided by complicit Americans. When I hear British folks pulling out this tired crap (which is not that often, I grant you), I remind them that American English more closely resembles the language that the English settlers used, and that modern Standard British English is a bizarre mutation of it. Don’t let anyone tell you that a pronunciation that rolls off your tongue, fits well in your dialect and leaves no room for comprehension errors is “wrong”. Of course, that also means I have no right to tell you not to say “primmer”, and I won’t. > [@Waenara](#): > > Similarly, until someone pointed it out in a previous thread, I never noticed the arrow in the Fedex logo - now it’s the first thing I notice every time I see it. Woah! I had no idea that was even there! > [@WF Tomba](#): > > I strongly recall reading that the connection between the symbol # and the word pound was actually introduced by the phone companies, and that all those old dry-goods salesmen were just following Ma Bell’s lead. Previously the symbol had been known as a hash mark. It’s still known as a hash mark in most of the English-speaking world, and among \*nix users (who also call it a comment sign, but we won’t go into that). “Octothorpe”, yet another name for the sign, was indeed invented by American engineers: > [@Wikipedia](#): > > # See Encore magazine article “Pressing matters: touch-tone phones spark debates” for another attribution to Bell engineers, by 1968. Lauren Asplund, who provided the article, says that he and a colleague were the source of octothorp at AT&T engineering in New York in 1964. > > # The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories, 1991, has a long article that’s consistent with Doug Kerr’s essay, in that it says octotherp was the original spelling, and that the word arose in the 1960s among telephone engineers. The “pound sign” name was not intentionally invented by American engineers, but was accidentally formed with the sign itself by English business clerks. (I was all prepared with the exact same quote as **Pygmy Rugger** used, too.) [Source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign) > [@WF Tomba](#): > > Also, I suspect vapid actually is related to vapor, even though the vowel is pronounced differently. Any Latin scholars want to back me up here? I’m no Latin scholar, but it appears from my searches that English “vapid” comes from Latin “vapidus”, while English “vapor” comes from, well, “vapor”. It’s important to note that **gardentraveler** ’s source, while acknowledging the relation, also says that “vapidus” split away from “vapor” in Latin. It’s Latin “vapidus”, not English “vapid”, that’s “probably related” to Latin “vapor”–in the sense that one actually developed from the other. But in a way, it’s fair to say that they’re related. One clearly refers to the other, even if indirectly. > [@Bootis](#): > > and that “flassid” is incorrect It’s not. It’s an equally acceptable pronunciation–if not more so IMO. ---
**Author:** ![TJdude825](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@TJdude825](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TJdude825)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/207 "2007-06-20T08:20:19Z")
The standard green EXIT signs you see everywhere have a weird kind of double-arrow in them, by the way, between the E and the X of course. I don’t think I ever saw the WSU Cougars logo until I started going to a school that plays against them. But after that, it took me a few months to figure out why the cougar was drawn so weird [![](https://www.cougarsinseattle.com/pictures/WSU_logo.jpg) ](https://www.cougarsinseattle.com/pictures/WSU_logo.jpg) It’s both a cougar and the letters WSU. The W is the mane, the S is the top of the head to the lower left part of the logo, and the U is the lower jaw. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/208 "2007-06-20T08:23:27Z")
[QUOTE=friedo] Due to the elliptical nature of the earth’s orbit, the earth, including the north pole, is actually farther from the sun during summer (in the northern hemisphere) than winter. What matters is that the north pole is _angled towards_ the sun during the summer months, and away from the sun in the winter. The southern hemisphere experiences opposite seasons for the same reason. [/QUOTE] In a similar vein, until I was about 14 I theorised that high northern and southern latitudes were colder than the equator because they were further away from the Sun, due to the curvature of the Earth. But hey, how many young kids even have theories about it? I hate to admit it but I until I read this thread, I hadn’t fully realised that ponies were not merely horses that hadn’t grown up yet :smack: I did know that there were specific breeds like Shetland ponies which remained in pony form all their lives. I’m British, and I don’t hear people say “primmer” for _primer_. I was momentarily confused when Jodie Foster used that pronunciation in _Contact_. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/209 "2007-06-20T08:44:11Z")
[QUOTE=Zsofia] My geography teacher in sixth grade told us that Central America was a country. I was, like, hell no, and showed him the dotted lines in it - he said those were states. I brought him the encyclopedia article on Panama. No dice. It reduced me to tears of frustration. [/QUOTE] Actually, that’s a funny one. Central America was originally intended to be similar to the USA, only in the end it’s ended up being little more than a curiosity. Did you know that Costa Rica and Guanacaste never declared independence? The following account is not what you’ll see in a history book, but how it was told to me by Costa Ricans when I worked in their Guanacaste province. At the time that the colonies were breaking out from Spain, Costa Ricans were, like now, a pretty laid back bunch. I mean, why get excited, you later have to calm down - too much work. One September 15th, a bunch of Nicaraguans bearing torches came down and told them “we’ve declared independence for the whole province, mates! We’re going to do like the Americanos, we’ll have separate states that are all Central America. There’s going to be Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and Guanacaste… and we’ll all be one country but different states and…” The alarmed ticos and guanacastecos looked at each other and said “ay, maeee! Isn’t this too complicated? Isn’t it going to hurt?” “NOOOO! No, mae! It’s independence, mae, independence!” “Aaaaah,” said the guanacastecos and ticos, not quite understanding what all the fuss was about (they’d always been pretty out of the way, which is how they liked it). And they went on like before, being as laid back as they could and trying to stay out of trouble cos trouble is so tiresome. Unlike the 13 colonies et co (where you still find things like treaties between the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the French and German governments, but where the “country” is the USA), in Central America the car plates of the different countries say Central America but the ones we think of as countries are… well, the countries. Guanacaste decided to join Costa Rica as a single country a few years after Independence was declared by those nervous people up north; they figured that with their small population, trying to set up embassies and all that simply was too much ado about something they didn’t care about in the first place. Learning things like this is what I love about my line of work. Specially because I learn them told in the local accent and that, mae, you don’t find in a book! ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/210 "2007-06-20T08:53:08Z")
[QUOTE=Nanoda] The most publically embarassing one was when I mis-spelt “lawyer” as “lawer” in high school, on the blackboard, 3 times in a row. :o I’d never had to spell it before! It totally looks right! OMG! [/QUOTE] You think that’s bad? Try writing a paper on Michael Romanov (I), and misspelling his name consistently throughout the whole paper. e.g. Micheal, not Michael. Then if that’s not bad enough, do it while your own first name is Michael. (Well, Mike for most usage by that point.) Then there was the paper we did on the whole Old Believer’s schism. Where, for reasons I cannot fathom, I consistently referred to the actions of the Holy Snod. (It’s supposed to be Synod.) Russian History was a fun course, but it didn’t do much for my spelling average. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/211 "2007-06-20T09:35:58Z")
[QUOTE=fetus] [No](http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=primer). “Primmer” is a British pronunciation. [/QUOTE] The source you cited appears to contradict you, and I can tell you from my own experience as a British person that the “primmer” pronunciation is not in common use on this side of the Atlantic, and that in the sense of an elementary textbook, it’s much less common than in the US, in any pronunciation. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/212 "2007-06-20T09:48:56Z")
[QUOTE=fetus] But it’s also called a “pound sign”. Surely you’ve heard that term in an automated phone system some time: “Please enter your PIN, followed by the pound sign.” [/QUOTE] In this part of the world, it’s called the “Hash Key”. I’ve only ever heard it called a “Pound Sign” in the US, and the first time I heard it, I was trying to work out why an American phone would have a “£” key on it… :smack: FWIW, I thought- at least until I was about 10 or 11- that Thunder was caused by rainclouds bumping together… ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/213 "2007-06-20T10:06:33Z")
[QUOTE=Shamozzle] Not me personally, but I know many, many people who believe in two thousand year old stories despite overwhelming logical evidence and great progression in human thinking. [/QUOTE] Dick. :rolleyes: > [@WotNot](#): > > The source you cited appears to contradict you, and I can tell you from my own experience as a British person that the “primmer” pronunciation is not in common use on this side of the Atlantic, and that in the sense of an elementary textbook, it’s much less common than in the US, in any pronunciation. Yup, never heard that pronunciation in 47 years and wouldn’t expect to. Idiomatically, a written “primer” is “priming” you with basic knowledge the same way that you prime a pump or a firearm. ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/214 "2007-06-20T10:34:14Z")
the _primmer_ pronunciation for ‘primer’ would run contrary to the spelling convention too, which suggests its pronunciation history. Compare; glimmer, dimmer, swimmer. By contrast there’s rhymer, schemer, timer. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/215 "2007-06-20T10:36:47Z")
And of course “primmer” is a word in its own right, as the comparative of “prim”. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/216 "2007-06-20T11:06:10Z")
> [@WotNot](#): > > The source you cited appears to contradict you Ack! Took a few different posters telling me, but I finally see it. :smack: In my defense, Webster’s uses a pretty odd system for differentiating vowel pronunciation. I use a modified American IPA in my own formal studies of linguistics, so it must have thrown me for a loop. Well, for all the sway “primmer” is supposed to hold here, I’ve never heard it in my life and I might not have figured out what it meant if someone tried to say it to me that way before I read this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/217 "2007-06-20T12:20:01Z")
[QUOTE=fetus] [No](http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=primer). “Primmer” is a British pronunciation. [/QUOTE] Oddly, one that I’ve never heard a British person use. ETA so I guess I wasn’t the first to post about this :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Santo\_Rugger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Santo\_Rugger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santo_Rugger)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/218 "2007-06-20T13:06:48Z")
[QUOTE=TJdude825] The standard green EXIT signs you see everywhere have a weird kind of double-arrow in them, by the way, between the E and the X of course. [/QUOTE] Guess it sucks if the exit is actually on the left! (Which is actually denoted by which side of the sign the exit number sits on top of.) [QUOTE=TJdude825] I don’t think I ever saw the WSU Cougars logo until I started going to a school that plays against them. But after that, it took me a few months to figure out why the cougar was drawn so weird [![](http://www.cougarsinseattle.com/pictures/WSU_logo.jpg) ](http://www.cougarsinseattle.com/pictures/WSU_logo.jpg) It’s both a cougar and the letters WSU. The W is the mane, the S is the top of the head to the lower left part of the logo, and the U is the lower jaw. [/QUOTE] I thought for the longest time that the old [Atlanta Hawks logo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AtlantaHawksOld.png) was some kind of weird Pac Man. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/219 "2007-06-20T13:33:06Z")
I say “primmer.” Well, in the one or two times in my life that I actually used that word. ---
**Author:** ![Grey\_area](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Grey\_area](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey_area)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/220 "2007-06-20T13:49:41Z")
[QUOTE=Zsofia] I can’t believe you guys didn’t know about pineapples!! Seriously - go to the grocery store today. Buy a whole pineapple. Cut the top off, the part with the leaves. _Plant it_. It’ll grow into a pineapple plant and have a baby pineapple! It will be the cutest fruit ever. [/QUOTE] You mean the most ungodly, blasphemous fruit ever. In my world, pineapples will always grow on trees and palm trees at that. Otherwise, I won’t know what to believe anymore… I’m also surprised by all this geographic misformation being taught at schools. For my part, I used to think that ‘hyperbole’ was pronounced the way it looks, like ‘hyper-bowl’. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477.md?page=12)