Act One. Small Thoughts in Big Brains. This American Life producer Alex Blumberg investigates a little-studied phenomenon: Children who get a mistaken idea in their heads about how something works or what something means, and then don't figure out until well into adulthood that they were wrong. Includes the tale of a girl who received a tissue box for Christmas, alledgedly painted by trained monkeys. (13 minutes)
Hilarious stories about the mistakes we make. I think that there's a unique opportunity with mass adoption of the Internet to explore a variety of mistaken information: misheard phrases.
I used to spend quite a bit of time in an online community which discussed a sports team. Every once and a while, someone would use the word "untracked," without having anyone comment on it. I was completely baffled as to what these people meant, then realized from context that they mean "on-track." But the mis-use was always hilarious. "I know we have a lot of injuries, but the coaching staff has to get us untracked."
Today, I saw a new one: "jump sh*t." What?! The author meant jump "ship." "Before you jump sh*t, you should figure out whether the grass is really greener on the other side."
Yes, the author mixed metaphors while making a mistake on one of the metaphors, but I'm not criticizing that. I just love collecting this kind of clearly long-standing mistake about what the original phrase was.
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