# Words you mis-said
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [October 17, 2025, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059 "2025-10-17T17:56:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@melaniethewitch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/melaniethewitch)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/1 "2025-10-17T17:56:47Z")
What are some words you’ve accidently said? what did you actually mean?
I’ll go first, Frain bog I mean Brain fog
---
### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/2 "2025-10-17T18:15:17Z")
My husband has a tendency to say one word or phrase when he means another.
My favorite: “We have to put our butts to the metal.”
---
### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/3 "2025-10-17T18:37:28Z")
When I was young, I read a lot and didn’t always know how words were pronounced. One day, I told my mom about two things that were very “sim-IL-yer”, when I meant “similar”. She laughed about it for years.
Yeah, I didn’t think it was funny either. 🤷♀️
---
### Author:  [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/4 "2025-10-17T18:45:49Z")
Ha ha, I RoonerSpism all the time.
Hopefully on purpose… I hope I’m not getting DiseaseHeimers’s Altz…
---
### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/5 "2025-10-17T18:49:04Z")
I remember embarrassing myself in front of my smart friends in college when I said “EP-i-tome” instead of "e-PIT-o-mee
Look, most of my vocabulary I got from reading. To this day there are words I’m not sure how to pronounce.
Saw one last night. “Oeurve.”
(ETA: you should see my husband try to remember how to pronounce “noir.”
I finally said, “nuwar. You know. Like nuwarwhals.”
I really cracked myself up with that one.)
---
### Author:  [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/6 "2025-10-17T19:01:15Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> My husband has a tendency to say one word or phrase when he means another.
>
> My favorite: “We have to put our butts to the metal.”
My uncle, accepting a dinner invitation: “We’ll be there with bells and whistles!”
---
### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/7 "2025-10-17T19:05:03Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> I finally said, “nuwar. You know. Like nuwarwhals.”
>
> I really cracked myself up with that one.
Yeah, me too! 😁
---
### Author:  [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/8 "2025-10-17T19:33:22Z")
I thought Calvin’s tiger friend was named _ **Hobbles** _ when I was a very young reader and still sometimes doubletake.
---
### Author:  [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/9 "2025-10-17T20:56:31Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#):
>
> Hopefully on purpose… I hope I’m not getting DiseaseHeimers’s Altz…
My wife often calls it Amortizer’s Disease.
---
### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/10 "2025-10-17T21:08:18Z")
For an embarrassing length of time I thought that “epitome” was pronounced “epi-tome” and that it meant a very thick book. Yes, seriously.
---
### Author:  [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/11 "2025-10-17T21:13:07Z")
Not me, but I had a close friend recently respond to my wise-ass comments by saying, “Don’t be so smuckin fart!”
---
### Author:  [@Paintcharge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paintcharge)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/12 "2025-10-17T21:41:41Z")
I once got into an argument with my 8th grade English teacher about the pronunciation of “celtic”. Being in Maine, she went with the way the Boston team says it, I countered that the real Celts said it with a hard C. I didn’t do well in that class. Granted, at that time in my life I was a little PITA.
I also had trouble with “hyperbole”, I mean it sure as heck looks like “hyper bowl.” And I agree with @Chefguy on epitome.
---
### Author:  [@Jaycat.again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaycat.again)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/13 "2025-10-17T21:45:00Z")
I had a co-worker who naively prided himself on being “worldly wise.”
We cracked up when he reported he had been to party where they served “CRUD-ites.”
I won bets from him at various times, on various subjects. For instance, he insisted that Bruce Springsteen (rather than Tom Waits) wrote “Jersey Girl.”
Another time, he insisted that sharks are mammals. That one took a call to the New England Aquarium to straighten out. More $$ in my pocket. (The guy on the other end of the phone finally said, “Who IS this, anyway?)”
---
### Author:  [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/14 "2025-10-17T21:47:21Z")
I had a friend from Lubbock, Texas who once bragged that he grew up down the block from the store where Billie Holiday bought his first guitar.
---
### Author:  [@Jaycat.again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaycat.again)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/15 "2025-10-17T21:50:15Z")
That reminds me of the time I took a riverboat ride in New Orleans. Upon disembarking, a woman said to her friend, “that was fun, they had a kaleidoscope and everything”.
(She meant “calliope.”)
---
### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/16 "2025-10-17T23:08:42Z")
> [@Paintcharge](#):
>
> And I agree with @Chefguy on epitome.
I knew the word epitome, but had never seen it in print and spoken at the same time. If someone had asked me to spell it, I’m guessing I would have come up with “epitomee” “epitomie”, or some such.
---
### Author:  [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/17 "2025-10-17T23:17:16Z")
For the longest time I mispronounced “chipotle” by transposing the final two consonants. In other words, I said “chi-POLL-tay” rather than “chi-POT-lay”.
I also kept calling the Intel Xeon processors “xenon”, like the noble gas.
---
### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/18 "2025-10-17T23:23:56Z")
Kind of hard to express in English, but I had a major gaffe at a group of Chinese college students when in the middle of a sentence, I meant to say _pei chan_ (“compensate”) and instead said _pei zhan_ (“to be buried with someone.”) There was a few seconds of stunned silence, then horrified laughter.
---
### Author:  [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/19 "2025-10-17T23:48:14Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> Saw one last night. “Oeurve.”
Oeu **vr** e - not that that makes it any easier to pronounce!
---
### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059/20 "2025-10-17T23:54:35Z")
Dammit. I checked that _twice_!
I would love for a little pop up dictionary on my phone that didn’t require swiping to another page.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-mis-said/1024059.md?page=2)