# 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:** 13
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/241 "2007-06-20T20:03:09Z")
[QUOTE=Anaamika] I’ve decided pineapples _d_ grow on trees and nothing will convince me otherwise. nopenopenopenope _shuts ears firmly_ [/QUOTE] There, there, of course they do. Little tiny spiky trees without trunks. I always thought a pry-mer was a simple book you taught children out of or white paint you put underneath real paint and a prim-mer was an embroidered or cross-stitched ABC or witty saying you hung on your wall. ---
**Author:** ![TroubleAgain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e480ec/32.png) [@TroubleAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroubleAgain)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/242 "2007-06-20T20:06:26Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot] I always thought a pry-mer was a simple book you taught children out of or white paint you put underneath real paint.\ [/QUOTE] That makes sense to me… a _first_ book, or a \*first \* coat of paint. Therefore, the _prime_-r, from the same root as _primary_. Needless to say, I’ve always pronounced it pry-mer. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/243 "2007-06-20T20:12:07Z")
[QUOTE=scotandrsn] With the right climate and soil, you should get one in about 2-3 years. Took us 5. [/QUOTE] Seems to me it’s faster to just go to the grocery store. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/244 "2007-06-20T20:12:36Z")
> [@](#): > > That makes sense to me… a first book, or a first coat of paint. Therefore, the prime-r, from the same root as primary. Needless to say, I’ve always pronounced it pry-mer. Agreed. I’ve always pronounced it “Pry-mer”. I long ago learned that the proper pronunciation was “primmer”, but I’ve never used it, because 1.) Everyone ELSE pronounces it “Pry-mer”. I’ve almost never heard “primmer” 2.)It’s stupid, given the word’s origin and meaning. I’ve made a conscious decision to always pronounce it “pry-mer”, to promote what seems a more reasonable pronunciation. “Primmer” is, at best, a bizarre vestige. (I’ve never thought it was “British”, and never heard that asserted.) I feel the same way about “impious”, which, according to the dictionaries, ought to be “IMP-ee-us”. I pronounce it “im-PIE-us”, which makes much more sense. Or I would, if I ever did pronounce it aloud. I never seem to get the opportunity. I also aspirate the “H” and use the indefinite"a" in constructions like “a historic occasion”. “an historic occasion” sounds stilted and affected and simply wrong. I certainly do pronounce that “h”. ---
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/245 "2007-06-20T21:21:44Z")
I remember in sixth or seventh grade reading a biography of John F. Kennedy and wondering why it spent so much time talking about this other Kennedy brother named Jack. Bobby and Teddy didn’t get this much attention in John’s bio, and I’d never heard of Jack Kennedy. I didn’t realize Jack was a nickname for John until forty or fifty pages into the book. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/246 "2007-06-20T21:35:53Z")
[QUOTE=Interrobang!?] I didn’t realize Jack was a nickname for John until forty or fifty pages into the book. [/QUOTE] Excuse me? Jack is used as a nickname for John? The people I know who use those manes use them separately. ---
**Author:** ![Telperien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/65b543/32.png) [@Telperien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperien)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/247 "2007-06-20T21:48:27Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] Excuse me? Jack is used as a nickname for John? The people I know who use those manes use them separately. [/QUOTE] Yes, Jack is a nickname for John. No rule against using it as a given name, though, unless you’re in one of those countries with naming restrictions. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/248 "2007-06-20T22:15:31Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] Excuse me? Jack is used as a nickname for John? The people I know who use those manes use them separately. [/QUOTE] It’s an old usage that was going out of style even when JFK was around. The real question is why someone named John would need a nickname. 😕 I was embarrassingly old before I found out that Norwegian wood was not a line of furniture or a particularly good species of tree to burn in fireplaces. I’m still finding phrases in songs I’ve heard for 20+ years mean something different than I thought they did. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/249 "2007-06-20T22:22:20Z")
[QUOTE=Zyada] I was embarrassingly old before I found out that Norwegian wood was not a line of furniture or a particularly good species of tree to burn in fireplaces. [/QUOTE] Err… what? [sub]This is _not_ making me look good…[/sub] ---
**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, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/250 "2007-06-20T22:24:55Z")
What does “Norwegian wood” mean then? The song’s not about how he slept with a girl who’s place had a lot of wooden fittings? ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/251 "2007-06-20T22:42:25Z")
[QUOTE=Zyada] The real question is why someone named John would need a nickname. 😕 [/QUOTE] Well, when the father is John, and at least one grandfather is John, and an uncle on the mother’s side is John, and there are at least two other cousins named John, nicknames are useful. And really, Jack/John is a much less weird nickname connection than Daisy/Margaret. I was embarassingly old (20-something) before I realized that the “La Jolla” (that I’d read about) was the same place as “Lahoya” (that I’d heard of) despite the fact I speak and read Spanish. (not well, but enough that it should have been obvious). ---
**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, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/252 "2007-06-20T22:57:33Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > I was embarrassingly old before I found out that Norwegian wood was not a line of furniture or a particularly good species of tree to burn in fireplaces. I’m still finding phrases in songs I’ve heard for 20+ years mean something different than I thought they did. Well, not _that_ different. “Norwegian wood” was literal, at least partially; it was common for tackier homes to be made of wood from Norway or Norwegian companies at the time (in Liverpool, I guess?), and the girl literally lived in a home made of Norwegian wood. He wasn’t burning Norwegian logs in the fireplace, he burned her house down. That’s how the Beatles explain it, anyway. > [@amarinth](#): > > I was embarassingly old (20-something) before I realized that the “La Jolla” (that I’d read about) was the same place as “Lahoya” (that I’d heard of) despite the fact I speak and read Spanish. (not well, but enough that it should have been obvious). 😃 I used to live a couple of miles from La Jolla (I just got back from a doctor appt. there, actually) and it was always amusing to talk to tourists who wanted to know how to get to “luh jawluh”, with a “j” as in “Jordan”. ---
**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:** [June 20, 2007, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/253 "2007-06-20T23:23:31Z")
Another San Diego place name: La Jolla never threw me, but I was quite old before I realized that Jamacha (written) and Hamishaw (spoken) were the same place. In my defense, even a knowledge of Spanish wouldn’t help with that one, since it’s originally a Kumeyaay word with Spanish orthography in an English-speaking context. ---
**Author:** ![quilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/839c29/32.png) [@quilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quilter)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/254 "2007-06-20T23:36:13Z")
[QUOTE=Dr. Drake] Another San Diego place name: La Jolla never threw me, but I was quite old before I realized that Jamacha (written) and Hamishaw (spoken) were the same place. In my defense, even a knowledge of Spanish wouldn’t help with that one, since it’s originally a Kumeyaay word with Spanish orthography in an English-speaking context. [/QUOTE] Try being on the east coast (Long Island, temporarily) and running into gee-CAM-ah. No, really, it’s pronounced HICK-e-mah. Really! I promise! (Yes, I know it looks like a turnip. Tastes more like water chestnuts. Really! I promise!) Back on topic: I wholly mis-pronounced “yacht” the first time I tried reading it aloud. “More of an ahhhh sound”, my 5th-grade teacher said. “Yaaaahkt” was my best attempt. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2007, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/255 "2007-06-21T00:10:12Z")
Until about a year ago, I thought “brassiere” and “brazier” were pronounced the same way: “bra-zeer.” ---
**Author:** ![merrily](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@merrily](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/merrily)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2007, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/256 "2007-06-21T00:20:16Z")
La Jolla. Huh. I was in my 40s before my husband pointed out to me that exits with two options, the first one goes to the right, the second to the left (in the US drive on right system). That’s helped me a lot, since I usually knew which direction I wanted, but a or b, or even worse, south or north, meant nothing. My bookworm mispronunciations were discipline and the English term gaol. ---
**Author:** ![Hirka\_T\_Bawa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/db5fbb/32.png) [@Hirka\_T\_Bawa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hirka_T_Bawa)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2007, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/257 "2007-06-21T01:38:27Z")
[QUOTE=robardin] No. It’s because New York City is not actually the capital city of New York State, _Buffalo_ is, and that’s where all the Bills (as in legislation) come from. It forms a double pun in football-related terms like having Bills “pass”, and sometimes the QB getting sacked is referred to as a “veto”. [/quote] I finished reading the other two pages of the thread to see if anyone corrected you on this. Saw that no one did, so I went back and found your original post. I was just about to hit the reply key when I saw this: > [@](#): > > OK, none of this is true except that NYC is not the capital of New York (it’s Albany), but maybe I can get a new piece of misinformation to circulate. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2007, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/258 "2007-06-21T02:49:03Z")
[QUOTE=Struan] Ariadne is air-ee-ad-nee, and Maeve does indeed rhyme with brave. [/QUOTE] I don’t know if anyone has responded to this, but its’s air-ee-ODD-nee. My friend Vashti (rhymes with Bash-tie) named her daughter that. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2007, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/259 "2007-06-21T03:02:36Z")
I won’t go into specifics, but I had some really really really off ideas about how men and women had sex that were based on figurative and flowery language in romance novels that I took literally or on my observations of animal husbandry. Since my parents didn’t talk about the specifics of sex (it wasn’t taboo so much as they were uncomfortable with it) and there was no such thing as sex education in middle school when I was there, let’s just say that if I had scored with a girl before I was 15 or 16 its theme-song would have been _One Night Only_ cause she wouldn’t have gone on another date. I believed the “Charles Drew was the African-American who invented plasma storage and died because no white hospital would treat him” Urban Legend until my first year on the Dope. (Hell, it was in books and on an episode of M_A_S\*H, so it had to be right.) I believed that hypnosis could produce memories of past lives to an embarassing age (early 20s or so). I totally misunderstood the nature of the practice. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2007, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477/260 "2007-06-21T03:26:34Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] Excuse me? Jack is used as a nickname for John? The people I know who use those manes use them separately. [/QUOTE] Did you notice Jack Kennedy, and John Gilbert Layton? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-wrong-stuff-you-believed-to-an-embarrassingly-advanced-age/408477.md?page=14)