This is my favourite from Less Wrong's 'Rationality Quotes':
From a BBC interview with a retiring Oxford Don:
Don: "Up until the age of 25, I believed that 'invective' was a synonym for 'urine'."
BBC: "Why ever would you have thought that?"
Don: "During my childhood, I read many of the Edgar Rice Burroughs
'Tarzan' stories, and in those books, whenever a lion wandered into a
clearing, the monkeys would leap into the trees and 'cast streams of
invective upon the lion's head.'"
BBC: long pause "But, surely sir, you now know the meaning of the word."
Don: "Yes, but I do wonder under what other misapprehensions I continue to labour."
Unfortunately I think it's apocryphal. If anyone has a reference or can fill in the name, I'd be most grateful.
Unfortunately I think it's apocryphal. If anyone has a reference or can fill in the name, I'd be most grateful.