Words with Friends

This photo was taken in Oklahoma City.
Also, it really has nothing to do with this post.

We had a friend once who had lived most of his life in France.  His accent was heavy, but we were always so impressed with his firm grasp of the English language.  He almost never slipped up. 

Almost never.

Once when we were discussing a baby kitten, he off-handedly referred to it as a "puppycat".  Only he said the world with such a casual (and heavily accented) tone, that we had to ask him to repeat himself several times.  Turns out, he had reasoned that a baby dog is called a "puppydog", so why wouldn't a small cat be called a "puppycat"?

We liked to never stop laughing at him.  When we finally calmed down, we decided that if we ever started a garage band, we were totally naming the band "PuppyCat".  Because how cool would it be to tell someone "Yes, I play lead guitar for PuppyCat."

Along those same lines, I listened to a podcast all about misunderstood words today.  I was telling our dinner guests this evening about a woman on the show who believed up until recently that the word "quesadilla" meant "what's the deal" in Spanish.

I laughed out loud when I heard that one.  Also, I plan on using "quesadilla" to mean "what's the deal" from now on.  Consider yourself warned.

My dinner guests, not to be outdone, told me that they have a relative who believed (all her life!) that when you receive outgrown items from an older sibling, that you were receiving "hammy-downs".

Which is so much more fun than hand-me-downs, don't you think?