“Believe it or not, my older sister thought, until it came up in a conversation a few years back, the the expression was “keyhole” rather than “keel-haul”.”
Funny how people hear different things. Until a couple of years ago my teenage son thought “going to Hell in a hand basket” was “Going to Hell in a ham basket”. Said he thought it was a Jewish expression.
“Going to Hell in a ham basket”.
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That really did make me LOL.
When I used the expression “old wives’ tale” once in class, one of my students expressed total confusion. He wondered how something erroneous could be called an “old WISE tale”.
My youngest son told me years ago that for a while as a child he thought we had in our house, instead of a living room and a dining room, a living room and a dying room. Hmmm...Leaves openings for wise cracks about my cooking, I know.