situations where people were misheard or misunderstood

Up in Howth with a friend and we were looking at the Gorse and I said "lots of gorse" and he goes "Yeah totes gorse" (thinking gorgeous). Story sounded funnier in my memory, I'll grant you.

Gregor Samsa

A couple of years ago, my then 6 year old daughter came in all in a tizzy. Some kid visiting the neighbourhood was out playing with the local kids (all about 6), and some dispute developed. The visiting kid called a local girl a really bad name, and the local kid ran home and told her father, and he came out and gave out stink to the visitor for saying such a terrible thing.

“What terrible name did she call her?” I asked

“A dirty horse!” Said my daughter. “That’s one of the worst things you can call someone!”

“Dirty horse?” I scratched my head for a minute, and then it dawned on me, and all i could do was laugh.

I’ll wait a few years to explain to her what a “dirty whore” means.

.anon.

Around 20 years ago, I had to bring my younger brother to the dentist. As I sat in the waiting room, I suddenly heard howls of laughter coming from the treatment room. It went on for around five minutes, stopped and then started again. Anyway, when my brother eventually emerged, I asked him what the hell was going on in there...

Apparently the chair had got stuck when fully reclined, and the dentist muttered at it under his breath "ah come on, get up ye bastard!" My brother heard him, and thought he was talking to him, so he apologised and immediately sat up... as if a dentist would call a ten year old child a 'bastard'.

Capt'n Midnight

Mokusatsu, a word that we could very well translate as “no comment” , or “let me withhold comments for now” was translated as “let’s ignore it”.

And because of that Hiroshima got nuked.