People Are Sharing The Everyday Things That Have "Dangerously Misleading" Names, And WOW, I Did Not Know What Some Of These Really Meant
Ah, names. They help us identify things, converse about them, and understand them. They're great — most of the time. There are more than a few names out there that do NOT mean what you'd expect, and that can mean some real trouble.
In r/AskReddit, u/Different-Citron-984 recently asked people to chime in with things they think have "dangerously misleading names." They're funny, weird, and, at times, mildly horrifying. Here they are:
1.Flushable Wipes
Expectation:
Reality:
"Flushable wipes are not flushable and cause massive shitty problems."
"Ask my elbow-deep-in-sewage fixing-the-pump self how I know they aren't flushable..."
"Every plumber ever will tell you this, yet somehow the packages say plumber approved. 🤔 I now have myself a new conspiracy theory."
2.Rocky Mountain Oysters
Expectation:
Reality:
"Rocky Mountain Oysters — they're not oysters at all! They're actually bull testicles, and the name can really throw people off."
3.Inflammable
Expectation:
Reality:
"Inflammable does not mean not flammable. It means it is flammable."
4.Water Moccasin
Expectation:
Reality:
"A water moccasin isn't a comfortable aquatic shoe."
"Their other name, cottonmouth, also qualifies."
5.Spotted Dick
Expectation:
Reality:
"First time I read spotted dick was in Harry Potter. I was like damn Rowling, isn't this supposed to be a children’s book? Turns out it's a pudding dish."
6.Ringworm
Expectation:
Reality:
"Ringworm. It's actually a fungus."
"My mother wouldn't let me go barefoot in the grass as a kid because she was convinced that 'those ringworms' were in the soil."
7.Low Head Dam
Expectation:
Reality:
"Low head dam. They are incredibly dangerous, and the name 'low head' makes them seem less dangerous.
They are a type of dam on rivers throughout the United States. Their construction creates a rolling water/hydraulic/washing machine effect immediately downstream of the dam that will pull you to the bottom of the river and spin you around until you die. The water cycles back on itself in a loop. It is very hard/nearly impossible to escape.
They look relatively harmless, like a short waterfall running the width of the river. That leads uninformed boaters and swimmers to not take them seriously. They have an incredibly high fatality rate. There is also not a federal database of this specific type of dam, and they kill people every year."
8.Sex Wax
Expectation:
Reality:
"Sex wax sounds like something used to make certain body parts slippery. In reality, it is used to make a surfboard not so slippery."
"I remember being really confused by his when I watched Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Pineapple Sex Wax was mentioned. I was thinking that the guy was genuinely using lube or something on his board."
9.Sweetbread
Expectation:
Reality:
"Sweetbread is not a pastry."
"My vegetarian ass ordering the sweetbread appetizer as a 19-year-old kid at a fancy restaurant trying to impress my more sophisticated date. Literally said, 'This isn’t very bready. I wonder how they make this.'"
"Made this mistake in Montreal. Delicious but definitely not what we expected to come out of the kitchen."
"This happened to me. I went to a French restaurant. Got a dish that had sweetbread as a side. It certainly didn’t look like sweetbread. Tasted it. Nasty and grainy. Asked the server what it was. Thalmus gland of a sheep. I almost cried."
10.Yellowcake
Expectation:
Reality:
"Yellowcake (uranium)."
11.Long Island Iced Tea
Expectation:
Reality:
"Long Island Iced Tea does not contain any tea at all. And can be very dangerous as it is very easy to drink."
"I found this out like two years ago. I’m not a big drinker, and it just never came up. Had maybe four in a couple of hours and never again."
12.Baby Aspirin
Expectation:
Reality:
"Baby aspirin. No amount of aspirin, especially that kind, should ever be taken by infants."
"NOT FOR BABIES."
13.Bear Spray
Expectation:
Reality:
"Bear spray. I worked in the tourist industry, and every year, we hear stories of some idiot who think it's like mosquito spray and spray it on their children and selves."
Have you ever been shocked to find out that the name of something you thought meant one thing meant quite another? (I don't think I'll ever recover from that "sweetbread" revelation.) Let's commiserate in the comments.
