Have you ever looked at a word a hundred times and one day it just looks different? I was just reading a post by Georgia and she called kids rug-rats. I never see the dash between the word and always just think of rugrats as little kids but never gave thought to the name or meaning. When I read the word as rug-rats, I thought of kids crawling around on rugs like a rat would crawl around. Kids are rug rats. I never gave the word thought before. I know... duh.

So have you ever looked at a word and suddenly thought, "Oh, I get it!" ?

Yes, quite often. I think it's a kind of déjà vu. That's when you see something for the first time and think you saw it before. You're talking about when we see something we know we've seen before but it looks odd. (Sometimes you think what you see, or have written, is mis-spelled, so you check, and it's not mis-spelled. So you think, 'Weird. You mean to say I've been seeing and spelling it this way all along?')

I guess our brains just slip a cog sometimes. In my case, at age 71, I find it happens more often.

Clare, you progably are used to seeing the word "Rugrat" because of the name of the popular cartoon. Actually it's just two words "rug rat" no dash. I mucked up

Rug Rat:
Rug rat = infant. An infant crawls on all fours and chews on everything it can. Often the child is on a carpeted floor to prevent injury. Babies are known for their constant drooling and uncleanliness, and their willingness to eat indiscriminately. Compare this description to our common perception of a rat. The rug rat is an effective metaphor because we visualize a cross between rat and baby - something that has an air of both sarcasm and truth, and may also reveal something sinister about how our culture perceives early childhood parenting.
Funny Metaphors

Couch Potato:

Couch potato = lazy person. A lazy person buries themselves in the cushions of a couch (sofa, chesterfield, La-Z-Boy) in safe, sedentary comfort, "vegging out" mindlessly in front of the TV, eyes in a fixed, submissive stare. A couch potato never leaves the home, and cannot be motivated, having everything nearby so they never have to move. Compare this to the potato, which is buried in the comfort and providence of soil and to which the only escape from its lifestyle is death. Covered in eyes, but without a brain or muscle, the potato is snuggled and unmotivated.

I have said that I'm gonna just sit and Veg but I never thought of that either.

P.S. I think I'm losing it!

Yeah, that happens a couple times. I think it's from being so accostomed to hearing the word and not reading it. I also see fairly often words that suddenly look different to me, especially simple words that we use everyday. Like certain letters will stand out it seems instead of the whole word standing out as one. Normally I think we look at words as one, not as separate letters. It reminds me of that part in, I think it was Black Sheep where something happened to David Spade and Chris Farley's car to make them really high and they start pronoucing the letters of 'road' very distinctly. It's like that. You just think, that's what 'start' looks like?

I still remember the moment when I finally realised that there was something strange about the spelling of "Beatles".

Jamais vu

Oh gosh! I spelled tomorrow tomarrowfor a gazilion years... until someone FINALLY pointed it out to me.

Now tell me... how does that happen?

That would be an American accent, wouldn't it?

When people from the US say "job", for example, people from Canada and the UK hear "jab". "Tomorrow" is spelled (kind of, roughly) as pronounced in British or Canadian English, but your spelling might fit a typical US pronunciation.

I pronounce tomorrow as:

tuh- m- arr- oh. (sounds like tomarrow)

Canadians say:

tuh- m- ore- oh.

This is correct, eh?

"When people from the US say "job", for example, people from Canada and the UK hear "jab"."

I think you are hearing a Northern or Northeastern accent. In the central part of the MidWest, "job" rhymes with "rob, cob, fob, Bob, mob, etc."

"Jab" rhymes with "re-hab, lab, taxicab, gab, nab, tab, etc."