{"id":14103,"date":"2010-05-07T07:00:01","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T07:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2010\/05\/07\/words-youve-had-wrong-your-entire-life\/"},"modified":"2010-05-07T07:00:01","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T07:00:01","slug":"words-youve-had-wrong-your-entire-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20100507-01\/?p=14103","title":{"rendered":"Words you've had wrong your entire life"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a child, my mother would always call out “banzai” when she wanted me to raise my arms above my head so she could put on or take off a pullover shirt. I assumed that banzai<\/i> was the word for “stick your hands in the air!”\n It wasn’t until well into my adult life that my mother explained to me that, no, banzai<\/i> does not mean “stick your hands in the air.” It’s a Japanese word meaning “ten thousand years”, shouted as a term of approbation and accompanied by (you guessed it) throwing one’s hands into the air. My mother was using it as a play term; in the United States, when you get your child to throw his hands into the air, you might accompany it with a shout of “Touchdown!”\n What words have you gotten wrong your entire life?\n Related: I Used to Believe<\/a>.\n Reminder<\/b>: This upcoming Sunday is Mother’s Day in the United States, and it honors all mothers, not just your own<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bonus niece chatter<\/b>: For a time, one of my nieces called a sneeze a bleshoo<\/i>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a child, my mother would always call out “banzai” when she wanted me to raise my arms above my head so she could put on or take off a pullover shirt. I assumed that banzai was the word for “stick your hands in the air!” It wasn’t until well into my adult life that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-14103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

As a child, my mother would always call out “banzai” when she wanted me to raise my arms above my head so she could put on or take off a pullover shirt. I assumed that banzai was the word for “stick your hands in the air!” It wasn’t until well into my adult life that […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}