Funny how quickly one's mind can fill in words and phrases that just aren't there.
My mother and I were traveling together last week, and she caught a glimpse of one of those highway warning signs that advertised the store Lands End. She did a double-take and realized that it really said Lane Ends.
I'm working on a software media-relate project in which the main (core) pieces of software are stored in a folder named mediacore. No matter how many times I see it, my brain always translates it at first look to "mediocre". Which I swear the product isn't.
Then there was the news brief on the radio a few years back, which started out, "The situation is getting worse in the Middle East, and [someone] blames it on a rock." After a moment of wondering what rock and waiting for the explanation, I realized that [someone] actually blamed it on Iraq (pronounced roughly "uh rock").
If you're a programmer, you might understand this one: Many many years ago, I attended a software technical lecture in which the technology and terminology were way beyond me and I struggled to understand. At one point, the lecturer began talking about "K statements." I had no idea what they were, which fit in with me having no idea what most of what he talked about was. But I became more baffled as everyone around me started discussing the use of K statements as if they were everyday things. Seriously, my degree was in computer science and I worked as a developer and I'd never heard of them. My puzzlement resolved itself when I caught a glimpse of a colleague's notes, mentioning "case statements," which of course I'd heard of and used fairly regularly.
Have you encountered any such visible or audible confusions?
