There are many attributes attached to my husband, but one of the most appreciated is his ability to poke fun at himself. I have decided with his permission to bare all on the wonderful world of my husband getting words wrong.
This is too funny to keep to myself, and besides this is almost a kind of autobiographical therapy for family issues!
1. It all began with NANO
After but a few years of marriage it became a matter of conflict that I, the Latin taught scholar from a top Girls' school in Oxfordshire, England, had married a tradie from the suburbs of Melbourne, and were now forever to argue the root of all words and the correct pronunciation. You would think after 6 years of this, he may concede that infact, i am far more learned than he, but no. It continues.
So back to 'Nano' nap: meaning; an exceedingly brief sleep. So called because scientifically a nano is a measure of time. Therefore to go down for one's nano nap is to sleep for a short time as a refresher.
Oh, the merriment, when i discovered that rather than saying 'nanna nap' quickly, my sweet uneducated man was instead calling it a Nano nap. You can imagine that kept me going for a long time, until...
2. SNICKERING
When put in context the sentence would read: "For goodness sake, stop snickering at me!"
Meaning: To tease, and chuckle meanly at someone. You may be forgiven for thinking this referred to a person who is consuming one or more Snickers bars, but you are wrong. Rather, this was said by my husband for many years under such a mumbled breath that it was not detected until our marriage union was well and truely underway, making it impossible for me to retreat. When i led him, very kindly, to the correct word, 'sniggering', we BOTH enjoyed a number of days of laughing and clutching our bellies while wiping away tears. What else had this darling man been mis-using for all these decades?
3. IN THE WALLS
This is a corker. This phrase lay dormant until our eldest son turned 2 and began to disregard warnings that he would hurt himself if he continued to balance on the footstool, on the stairs, with drumsticks in his hands....
Low and behold, he would come a cropper and have bruises and lumps the size of eggs and the shade of aubergines to show for it when Daddy came home.
"My, you have been in the walls, haven't you son?". You would think that when i referred to his lesions as 'war wounds' that he may have been given significant pause to consider whether 'walls' was perhaps misplaced in this context. No. So ingrained was this phrase that having listened to my explanation of why this is incorrect, through torrents of laughter and a little bit of jeering, he remained adamant for a little longer until hilarity led to his surrender. Suddenly, "In the WARS" made a lot more sense, but doesn't nearly sum it up. You see, quite often our son does hit the walls and so in our family it will remain, "in the walls".
4. CHARACTER-TURE
This beauty was very recent and the additional impact of this little number was the vehemence with which it was delivered. Let me set the scene...
One Saturday afternoon, on the sofa, kids are both sleeping...time for some adult conversation and weekly catch up. My husband was keen to share a funny with me and i am poised. Most of his stories are not altogether amusing for me a) because i have heard them before (or a version with alternate subjects and nouns inserted) and b) because his idea of funny isn't always mine. This was one of those times. But amidst the waffle sprang the word that would make my day; 'Character-ture': Meaning; a cartoon over-embellishment of the real article or truth. Also known as 'Caricature'.
"Wait, what did you say honey, character-what?"
"CHARACTER-TURE" he repeats with a loud, slow deliberation as if i were hard of hearing. But the greater effect came from the Afro-American style head jiggle and neck jutting (Ricki Lake-esque) which was highlighting for him that he had once again stumbled across a word that i didn't know!
Then came the silent type of laughing you do when you are trying to get air and stay alive. In the middle of this i tried to correct his faux-pas, and to add to the funny-factor, there was no fight on my hands instead a dawning of truth on his face followed by his own fit of air stealing laughter!
I am sure there will be more of these vocabulary delights, and i am also sure that there are plenty of hooters locked away in my memory which will burst forth randomly so please be advised for further articles entitled "I'm not laughing at you, honey..."
