This troper got a little bit worried when her father told her last night he was going to a "gentlemen's club" until he explained. Why is this here, you ask? I thought he meant gentlemen's club in the GrandTheftAuto sense. ''Yikes''.

This troper remembers vividly a church retreat in which someone had arrived armed with the new knowledge that "boner" meant "mistake"...and by the end of the weekend the entire group was using it. "My boner" as "my bad" or the like was especially popular.

This troper remembers an older woman complaining about bridesmaids wearing "distracting thongs" at a wedding she'd been in charge of. It turned out she meant "flip flops."

That's still what "thong" means in Australia.

Hold on. The bridesmaids were wearing flip flops? What, were Crocs considered "too dressy"?

This troper is terrified every time her grandmother says she's putting her thongs on before going the the pool (by thongs she means flip-flops.)

This troper was once acquainted with an unfortunate fellow named Richard Lessman. Needless to say, he was well acquainted with the "dick"'s more flexible qualities.

I knew somebody whose coworker was named Richard Siemen. Lessman had it easy.

While we're on the topic of dirty-sounding surnames, I once knew a guy named Mr. Slutsky. The kicker? He taught ''middle school.''

This troper once drew a picture for art class of a family by a house and had to come up with a name. The name I came up with? The Stoners. No, I hadn't heard the term before.

Of course, "Stoner" is an actual English surname.

It's an Australian surname too. Casey Stoner, anyone? Moto GP fans? Hello?

This Troper has a classmate with that last name. We have a RunningGag that "she comes from a long line of Stoners!"

This troper has been in the habit of referring to cats as "puss" and "pussy" since she was small, and occasionally gets stares for it. "Here puss, puss, puss..."

This troper's grandfather frequently uses the phrase "to make out" in its original definition, which apparently is "to fare." It gets even funnier in the phrase "to make out like bandits" (i.e. "to fare quite well"). Said grandfather occasionally asks "So, how did you make out?" This troper never quite knows how to answer.

This troper still uses that expression, and laments its passing. However, it does make for more information than I sometimes need... ("How'd you guys make out?" ''"YOU KNEW WE MADE OUT?"'' "No, no, in the other sense-- wait, you two made out?")

"To make out like bandits" is still used occasionally in my area, but only in its full form. From what I've heard, anyway.

This troper (who's from Vancouver, but it may have been online, in which case all bets are off) vaguely recalls hearing 'make out' used in that sense at least occasionally.

This Troper's step-mother used that phrase often. It carried along, and hilarity ensues.

This troper recently wrote a short story called "Double Entendre" based entirely on this trope. It involved faggot burning, meaty erections and the head being cut off a young boy's cock.

The head being cut off a cock? Well, that's ''one'' way to stop the bloody things from crowing at like 5 in the *honk*ing morning. Off with its *honk*ing head.

Wait, ''meaty erections''? Are they building stuff out of ground beef?

Now ''that's'' a funny idea. Ha, you've just given me the best mental image EVAR.

Did you include a man beating another man's ass with his rod?

For some reason this Troper's parents refer to her best friend as her "girlfriend." In public. Loudly. ''I'' know what they mean, but the people around us don't.

Double-subverted (I think) for ThisTroper, who was surprised by her grandmother's offhand reference to said troper's "girlfriend" until she realized that Grandma was just exhibiting this trope.

Fairly standard in my area (Central Ohio) that this troper actually views it as a bit of a double standard. Girls can refer to their girlfriend and have everyone understand they're talking about female friends, but the same can't be said about a male going over to his boyfriend's house.

Unless the speaker is my grandmother. Either that or she's a lot more GenreSavvy than I realized...

This Troper had a teacher that told a group of students to "hook up and make out" over the weekend.

This troper once made a blunder when her brother's ex-girlfriend (who he was and is still friends with) came over one night for dinner. Wondering what their plans were for the rest of the night, this troper asked the two if they were "going out." Cue awkward silence.

This Chinese-born troper has once used the word "ejaculate" in the old-fashioned sense (he was reading C. S. Lewis at the time), caused his elementary school teacher a mild stroke.

This troper, until she was thirteen or so, exclusively read books that were written before 1920, and enjoyed every page. Naturally, this affected her speech and her comprehension. On one humiliating occasion, she mentioned that she felt particularly queer, and was promptly educated by a set of nine-year-olds that it meant something other than strange. She also had trouble talking about her bitch, which is to say her female dog (once said dog was spayed, this made things easier-- after all, you can't call her a bitch if she's not intact). And for a long time she did not understand why people should find it funny that any character in a story should ejaculate. And while not an example of this trope, she has annoyed many people by using the words "shall," "ostensibly," "mayhap," and "pray" as in "pray, what is the reason for your uncontrollable laughter?"

This troper understands why the latter usages would be seen as antiquated, but not why they aren't seen as ''awesome''. She also sympathizes in regards to use of the word "queer"-- while she does use both "queer" and "gay" in the modern sense, as in queer theory and the GLBT community, she sees absolutely no reason why they can't be used in their original meaning too. They're so much more precise than just saying "how weird" or "she felt happy and light-hearted".

You mean people give ''you'' a difficult time for using words like "shall" (''shall''!), "ostensibly" (you seem mature enough that your peers should know the term by now), and "mayhap"? I could understand "pray" receiving a bemused response, but certainly not annoyance. They are perfectly reasonable terms, and "shall" is a staple of English in its current grammatical form!

This troper has the same problem with bitch because she's a dog nut. I also have the same problem with stud as in stud cat. On research papers to avoid the snickering of uneducated classmates, I usually have to add a note & I’m sick of it.

This German troper remembers a discussion her class had with a teacher about the phrase "passt wie die Faust auf's Auge" (fits like a fist on an eye). He said it meant "doesn't fit at all," while we said "fits very well."

This troper's grandfather points with his middle finger.

This troper very much enjoys telling people on cold days that it is "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." For those who don't know, the phrase refers to a pyramid of brass canon balls used during the Civil War (which was called a "brass monkey"). When it was cold enough, the pyramid would crack and the balls would fall apart.

Not really.

This troper and her mother have both attempted to explain to her grandmother that it is no longer socially acceptable to refer this troper's female friends as "Troper's girlfriend" in public, especially in the small conservative community that she lives and works in.

This troper's younger brother once named his stuffed rhinoceros "Horny" much to the amusement of house guests and to the horror of my mother.

This troper, due to her mild growth kink, used to be ''very shy'' about saying the word ''"grow"'' and its conjugations (akin to the "Changes" example on the main page) due to its "connotations." Nowadays, it's still a little blush-inducing, but '''especially''' when she means "growing to {{Godzilla}}-size."

This troper's mother frequently asks if and when she's going to "hook-up" with her friends.

Defied in this troper's high school production of ''Ah, Wilderness!'', where all instances of the word "gay" were changed to "happy." The drama teacher realized using the former term repeatedly in front of an audience comprised mainly of teenagers would be ''asking'' for trouble.

This Troper is friends with a guy whose mother's first name ''is'' Gay. His favorite thing to tell people is that his mom's gay and see how confused people get.

This Troper had an ex-boyfriend who had gone to the Galapagos Islands and gotten a polo shirt with two blue footed boobies on one side of the chest. It became an inside joke with us, where I'd poke the birds and he'd yell "Stop poking my boobies!"

This troper appeared in the JB Priestly play ''Dangerous Corner'', which requires Stanton to say "It's very rum ..." (meaning odd/strange) while he is pouring drinks! In our version he just said "It's very strange ..." instead.

This troper remembers when her dance class watched WestsideStory this one time back when she was a freshman in high school. During the beginning of I Feel Pretty, one of her friends shouted "GAAAAAAY!!!" rather gleefully and in a way that made her sound like a 10 year old [[strike:boy]] when the actress got to that part. This didn't surprise me at all, but I did find it a bit annoying at the time. Fortunately the teacher told her to shut up before she could take it any further.

This Troper was in a science class discussing evolution. Teacher mentions Homo Erectus. HilarityEnsues.

This troper was once giving an example of scientific naming to a fellow student, gave the first one that came to her mind, and got some very "hurr hurr" sorts of reactions and awkwardness.

I was once in a lower level band class, where the entirety of the class were once called a bunch of boners. Everyone went silent in an attempt to hold in his laughter, especially the bit when he said it also meant a stupid person. Now that I read that it also meant mistake, I don't know whether to laugh, or notice oddly that he just used a {{Stealth Pun}}.

One time in a musical summer camp: "I'm so pretty/Oh, so pretty/So pretty, so pretty, so ''bright''.

This Troper had to explain the line "pretty and witty and gay" from I Feel Pretty from WestSideStory to a classmate. He said "Oh, good. I thought that she meant... yeah..." This lead to a debate about sexual preference that took up all of our class time. Our teacher got involved, too.

One of the daycares I went to during my elementary school years would regularly put me in the corner for saying "jackasspenguin."

Much, much later, I would end up shocking the owner of a local costume shop by asking if they had an ass-head.

A year after that, two of my Drama class pals (our resident AmbiguouslyAutistic devotee and our resident Comedically DepravedBisexual Ham Actor) conversed this trope. He discussed this with us later: Allegedly, the latter offered to show the former his cock and got a query as to whether he meant "chicken."

My third grade teacher said this trope almost exactly to one of my classmates. Also, here in Cincinnati, Leslie Ghiz is always running for some type of political office. (I should know which but...I don't really care.)

I'm a huge fan of the Oz books, and had just picked up a copy of a book containing all of the 'Queer Visitors of Oz' comic strip from the early twentieth century, now I'm a MtF transexual and bi so being called queer doesn't exactly insult me but when I walked onto the bus a bunch of kids started chuckling about the title of the book... "It says queer," so I sat down next to them and had a little chat about eytomology.

When this troper was in choir in high school, we once sight-read a song that included the line "I marvel that I am so gay, so gay." Needless to say, we never sang that song again.

When this troper was in ''first grade'' (and this was 20 years ago), one kid actually snickered when the teacher mentioned ''PussInBoots''.

During a winter music ensemble workshop(Like string quartets and stuff)we were talking about our instruments when our first violinist mentioned "f-holes" and just laughed(For people who don't know they are the f shaped holes in the violin where sound comes out). Also she was arguably the most innocent one of us, or so we thought.

At the age of six, I was ignorant of most slang and I loved dinosaurs. So when I was given a toy Pachycephalosaurus, I named him Boner.

''Frostsabre.'' YMMV highly here (TheresNoSuchThingAsNotability, right?), but I had read a 1950s sci-fi/romance which had played this trope straight with "gay" describing the woman's feelings toward the commander. But subverted with something like "The Vegan leather was actually made of cheap plastic" or thereabouts.

I know how to lampshade this trope as I have seen this once in a self-help book: "I'm happy because I'm gay."

This troper is a Catholic, as in, one of the ''really traditional'' Catholics, and when I first heard the term 'ejaculation,'...you could guess what a boner I made. Actually, the word "ejaculation" in this sense means a short affirmation said with the intent of giving glory to God. On the plus side, I wasn't the only one who had this reaction to first hearing the word...

This Troper has a stuffed raccoon named Gaea, and usually needs to wait for her friends to stop snickering before explaining why.

This occurred at a family reunion this Troper was at a number of years back. As it so happened, my mother was having her period at the time and ran out of sanitary napkins, so when someone else came into the women's room, she asked for a "napkin"--assuming that said person would understand from the context that she needed a menstrual pad. Apparently my cousin, who was almost thirteen at the time, must have been a late bloomerto TheOtherWiki, the average age at which girls begin to menstruate is 11.75, a little over a year younger than she was at the time, because she didn't understand Mom's request and came back with a handful of table napkins and passed them into the stall.

This troper had the word gay in her English grammar books. It was in a context of 'glad/gay/happy'. You bet boys had fun. She's wondering how many of them knew the meaning the writers ''probably'' meant. P.S. English isn't her native language.

Semi-example, as it does not concern a change in word-usage over time, just a word usage we were unaware of. I have a friend with the surname Tuddenham, which became shortened to Tudders as a nickname. According to Urban Dictionary, tudders "means to have a massive gay orgy only consisting of male anal prodding with drumsticks and fingers." Naturally, the nickname became stuck even more.

This troper was describing a first date that I had been on to a friend, and referred to the guy I was out with as 'my escort.' Friend told me that she knew what I meant, but warned that 'escort' has often has the connotation of 'paid escort' nowadays, and that I probably shouldn't describe my now-ex as such to anyone who doesn't know that I indulge in AntiquatedLinguistics from time to time.