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Imagine you're ordering a meal. Or writing the sweetest text to your crush. Or even making the perfect presentation to your colleagues. Suddenly the words simply stop... coming. Or worse, you start spitting random jibberish that makes absolutely no sense. Brain farts are real, ladies and gentlemen. But the good news is that you aren't the only one who's dropping these stink bombs. Continue scrolling and check out some of the funniest struggles people have had with the English language, so that the next time you release a gassy wind of iuhgkfhregwlrh you can remember that it happens to the best of us.

#1

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

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Rissie
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah, people with headsets tend to cause situations like that. Makes them look very silly.

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Interestingly, there's a scientific term for what we like to call a "brain fart." Whenever you're having one, you're experiencing tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) syndrome, from the phrase "it's on the tip of my tongue." And while there is no universally accepted cause, there are some scientific theories that try to explain it.

#2

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

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Nadine
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah ... Recently a friend of mine told me how he had taken his little girl to the "fish museum." lol

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littlesaresare
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I love these kinds of things, when someone renames something because they can't remember the real name. A friend couldn't remember 'asteroid' once so called them 'occasional flying death rocks'. It is now obviously the only reasonable thing to call them. Just like 'liquid zoo' is the only reasonable thing to call an aquarium now.

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Monika Soffronow
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Hilarious! But, if you are learning a foreign language then this is a normal mode. If you cannot find the word, or you haven't learned it yet, then describe what you mean. You will use more words, it may come out funny sounding, but there is no need to stop communicating because there is a word missing here and there! Sadly though, this also holds true for people with dementia.

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Angela Hudson
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

true for those of us who have some aphasia after a stroke too, stroke was small, losing words sometimes now the only after effect. being a poetic ,creative person have made descriptions of the words I can't say/recall just part of my 'thing'.lol

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Laur 24
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

*Little kid walks up to parents* can we go to the liquid zoo mommy?

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Destiny Rose
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My friend was talking about how she's never been to the ocean. She said, 'I really want to see the water cows!' She meant the orcas lol.

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Gemma Lees
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

A mate of mine once forgot the words "safari park" and called it a "drive-thru zoo". This was about 10 years ago, we all still call it a drive-thru zoo. Because of her we also call "salad dodgers", "salad badgers" and gig tickets, "testicles" as when drunk she attempted to say "Download Festival tickets" and instead said "download testicles me vicars".

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Lizzie the Crayon
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We went to the aquarium and the zoo in the same day so we went to the solid zoo and liquid zoo in the same day

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BusLady
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They could have done without that 2nd remark. How rude.

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Bacony
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

(On road train) To the left you can see the Mercury, and to the right you can see the Whey.

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Loki’s Lil Butter Knife
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Henceforth, I declare that the Oxford English Dictionary change “aquarium” to “liquid zoo”

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The first one to describe the TOT phenomenon was psychologist William James. "A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term," he wrote in his 1890 book Principles of Psychology.

However, no empirical research was done until 1966 when Harvard researchers Roger Brown and David McNeil published a paper in the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. They read definitions to people, and then asked them to remember the defined words. During the TOT state, these people could recall certain aspects of the word, and the closer they came to remembering it, the more accurate their associations became.

"The signs of it were unmistakable; he [the subject] would appear to be in mild torment, something like the brink of a sneeze, and if he found the word his relief was considerable. While searching for the target, [he] told us all the words that came to his mind. He volunteered the information that some of them resembled the target in sound but not in meaning; others he was sure were similar in meaning but not in sound."

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#4

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

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Laugh Fan
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That's priceless! I wish mine came out as actual words when I stuff up - normally it's just gibberish.

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#9

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

oflacar Report

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Sonja
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Understand. I wanted to order " pizza prosciutto cotto" and it came out as "pizziutto prosto" and if you try to pronounce it in my language, the first part of the new word sounds like a...really bad word for vagina...so the waitress looked at me with surprise...

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#12

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

Holly Fouch Report

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Tara
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I love this so much. I’m glad they had a good laugh too.

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#13

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

Erica Siegel Report

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A panda
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4 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Once a waiter asked me what i would like.....i wanted to say "just water" but i said "wust jater"😂😂😂

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#21

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

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Beeps
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is the kind of language I routinely speak at the onset of a migraine attack. Freaks the hell out of people.

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#24

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

Melindaa_xx Report

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Foxxy
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I said "love you too" to the pizza delivery guy the other day instead of just "you too" in reply to have a good night.

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#29

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

Jeni Ensminger Report

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Laugh Fan
Community Member
4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I used to get a taxi home from school and the driver was playing some truly awful music (okay I know that's just an opinion) but instead of saying 'can we switch that off? I asked if we could have it off instead - a UK colloquialism for sex. I was 12.

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#30

People-Mess-Up-English-Words

Katie Wright Report

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Monika Soffronow
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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At that ungodly time, any and all miscommunications between brain and tongue are understandable.

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