Do you remember the first time you ever heard a certain word?
I clearly remember the first time I heard the word “book,” to mean “run like hell.” I also remember the first time I heard the word “apeshit.”
Both times were in the smoking area at my high school, during whatever break. Before school started one morning, several of us were out there, and our friend came in with a story about smoking some pot by a nearby church that morning, when the police cruised by. “We booked it to school!” he said. I thought, “What an interesting description!”
And then I heard the word “apeshit” at another time. I don’t remember the context, but it was hilarious!
Who even makes this stuff up? <<That’s a question all its own!
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I remember the first time I heard a specific word pronounced correctly. I was sitting drinking coffee with a friend in a HOJOs in autumn, 1992. I was 39 years old. We were taking a class together.
The word was cacaphony. I’d only read the word, never heard it spoken. She said it and I didn’t recognize it all at first. The context was about noise. Then I realized what she had said and it was such an epiphany. I’m not kidding. Her pronounciation was so entirely different from mine that it sounded like one of the most beautiful words I’d ever heard. Or maybe it was the coffee. Anyway, I still remember that moment; the when, where and who, but I can’t remember the conversation for the life of me.
I remember the first time I heard the word “rape.” I was in the car and my family was discussing a movie. I was maybe 6 or 8.
Well..that’s how I’ve always said it. But then again, I may have heard it first, before reading it.
How were you saying it?
I remember the first time I heard the word “obstreperous.” I thought, “dang, that’s a cool sounding word!”
The word that immediately followed it was “negroes.”
^^Running for the dictionary….Oh my. :(
@Dutchess_III. LOL. This is a bit embarrassing. Kackah-fonee. Short A, soft A, long O, long E. Emphasis on the first syllable.
I see. Seems logical though.
1969. My oldest brothers’ first year of college. When he came home to visit he told me to say Far Out instead of cool. He said it was a cooler word than cool.
Not one specific word, more of a phrase which went something like this…
“you rang m’lud?”
I’d have been around, ooh…3 or 4 maybe & was hankering for some ice cream see.
I don’t remember this, but my parents love to tell this story. I was probably 3 and my family was in the car; my parents were talking about the illiteracy rate and my older sister asked “What does illiterate mean?” And they said it means you don’t know how to read. And apparently I then very proudly declared “I’m illiterate! I don’t know how to read!”
My favorite new phrase is one that was bestowed on my husband at the company Christmas party this past weekend: Sex helmet. LOLL! He got it after I told a funny story about a motorcycle wreck he got into while racing. Broke his collar bone.
Yes. I was quite young. The word was “fruition,” and I got humiliated for mispronouncing it.
I’d read the word many times but had never heard anyone say it. It’s a useful word, and I found the perfect place for it during a conversation. I said FROO-shun. My then-boyfriend started laughing uncontrollably and declared, in a loud voice, “FROO-shun?!?! It isn’t FROO-shun, it’s froo-I-shun!!!” He mocked me and made me feel idiotic.
I learned, in that moment, never to ridicule anyone for a mispronunciation. A mispronounced word is nothing more than a sure sign that a person reads; that shouldn’t be a cause for criticism. If somebody says a word incorrectly, tell him/her quietly and without derision.
By the way, this is just one of many reasons why that guy is my ex-boyfriend and not my husband.
@Love_my_doggie I still feel pangs of self-consciousness every time I say “bias” or “biased” because of this one time in high school that I got made fun of for the way I pronounced it.
There is nothing that pisses me off more when someone happens to know something you don’t, then mocks you because you don’t know it @Love_my_doggie. Well, shit! There was a time they didn’t know it either. They had to learn it.
People on Fluther do that a lot.
As a young teen, I heard the word “Vigilantes” on Sesame Street, and it was accompanied by a crowd of angry people. I wondered what the word meant, and why they thought normal viewers of that show would understand it.
Clearly! The word was “coincidence.” I was maybe 8. I had just come home from seeing a Saturday matinee that some of friends had talked about a few days earlier. I was amazed by the linkage and asked my mom abut it. She taught me the word/meaning (she was a writer) and I recall bragging to my grandmother about it later that day.
@filmfann that’s what Sesame street is all about. Teaching.
@Dutchess_III ya, but when you’re 13, you don’t expect to learn something on a show for preschoolers.
See, I have never understood the idea of using only very simple words for preschoolers. Every word is complicated for them, until they learn what it is. I used big words with my kids all the time.
Plus, their audience is much more than preschool. It’s probably up to about 10, or even 11.
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