If you want to hear some truly creative takes on the English language, look to the children in your life. Kids have talent for coming up with entertaining descriptors and malapropisms that are arguably better than the correct terms.
We asked members of the HuffPost Parents Facebook community to share the funny names their kids have for various things, and received an overwhelming number of responses. Read on for a hilarious sample.
1. “My 5-year-old says she wants ‘Happy Donald’s’ every time I ask her what she would like for dinner. We have all started to call McDonald’s ‘Happy Donald’s.’” ― Saundrice Thompson
2. “My youngest called freckles ‘nipples’ for months when he was about 2 or 3. I’ll never forget the first time he did it! We were cuddling, watching his favorite show and he turned, looked into my eyes and said, ‘Mama, you got nipples all over your face,’ with the most thoughtful expression.” ― Sara Hatch
3. “For several years, our son called Target ‘the circle and the dot store.’ It took us way too long to figure out what he was talking about!” ― Alice L Stephenson
4. “My daughter is almost 4. She likes to jump on my bed and scream ‘CANNIBALS.’ She doesn’t believe me that its actually cannonball.” ― Heather Brenneman
5. “My son calls playing in the dirt on the side of the house ‘gardening’ because I have a little garden close to where he plays.” ― Brittany Vincent
6. “When one of my sons hurt his bits, my daughter kept calling them ‘tentacles.’ Thank goodness we didn’t correct her because she went to preschool the next day and told everyone about her brother’s tentacles ... ” ― Kara Sherrill Gamba
7. “My 3-year-old calls a gazebo a ‘zigaboo.’” ― Becki Harrington-Davis
8. “One of my kids calls granola bars ‘vanilla bars.’ I don’t know why, but it makes me smile every time. Also ‘Melvin and the Chipmunks.’” ― Joree Mason Morris
9. “My 3-year-old refers to lemon poppyseed muffins as ‘freckled muffins.’” ― Liz Krause
10. “My 4-year-old says ‘heart beep’ and mixes up words starting with an ‘s,’ so he says ‘puh-ciderman’ for Spiderman, ‘X-sool’ for school.” ― Callie Van Leuven
11. “My daughter says ‘cup capes’ instead of cupcakes and it’s great.” ― Katie Groome
12. “We were taking care of three kittens for a friend, and our 3 year old son called the littler box a ‘glitter box’ and still does to this day. Now we all call it a glitter box!” ― Lauren Nichols
13. “My daughter calls a whisk an ‘un-doer-lumper.’” ― Caroline Boag Maddux
14. “My boys got ‘snickey bars’ (Snickers) and ‘chocolate muffins’ (Reese’s) trick or treating, and now we only ever eat ‘chocolate muffins.’” ― Jessica Shook Jarrett Boros
15. “My kiddo just had to see ‘Shampoo.’ Years later we were front and center (and soaked) watching Shamu at SeaWorld!” ― Joni Croce Bussoli
16. “We used to have a Subaru when my son was around 2-3 years old. He used to call it ‘the Moopatoo.’ And for the rest of our lives, that is what Subarus will be called for my husband and I.” ― Nikki Lee
17. “Turkey lunch meat was ‘white ham.’ Makes total sense.” ― Jenelle Hardin
18. “Pistachios are ‘Picasso nuts.’” ― Rasee Govindani
19. “My son called Rice Krispies Treats ‘Krispie Ipsie Treats.’” ― Rebecca Weaver
20. “When my daughter’s playing Pokémon with her brother she calls bulbasaur ‘vulvasaur.’” ― Crystal Sand
21. “Sour Patch Kids = ‘Sour Humans’ and SpaghettiOs = ‘Circle Soup.’” ― Allison Ditty
22. “When my son and daughter were little they made up a day of the week. We were practicing the names of the days of the week. My son said ‘Monday, Tuesday, Hoonsday.’ I said ‘what day is that?’ He said with a serious look ‘it’s after Tuesday.’ It was probably the funniest thing I heard.” ― Cathy Ord
23. “My son used to call wrists ‘hankles’ which stood for ‘hand ankles.’ He used to call mint-flavored toothpaste ‘spicy toothpaste.’” ― Jennifer Allanson Rock
24. “My son loved to be tickled not only in his armpit, but in his ‘chin-pit’ and his ‘knee-pit’ as well.” ― Tracey Luehrs
25. “An exclamation point was an ‘emergency i.’ Beignets are still ‘pillow donuts.’” ― Sarah Vied Zeller
26. “My youngest daughter says ‘warmleggers’ instead of ‘leg warmers.’” ― Phillip Crosby
27. “My daughter called my husband’s bathing suit ‘water shorts.’ To this day, and she is 6, she will still ask him if he packed his water shorts when we go on trips.” ― Daphne Griffel
28. “A hole in a seam (like on a stuffed animal) is called a ‘finger way.’” ― Ashlee Palango
29. “When my kids were younger, they named places by what they served or something that stood out about the place. For example, McDonald’s was ‘the french fry store,’ or Mexican food restaurants were ‘chip stores.’ I’m not sure where it came from exactly, but my husband and I still refer to some places that way.” ― Lauren Rose
30. “‘Spearmint’ instead of experiment. ‘I wanna do a science spearmint!’” ― Jolynn Bratton
31. “My son calls a fly swatter a ‘bug slapper.’ We are from Massachusetts tho so it is more like ‘buuug slappahhh.’” ― Kristen Piccirillo
32. “‘Flat cheese’ for Kraft singles.” ― Gina Randall
33. “My daughter used to call cemeteries ‘statue farms’ ― which is new a permanent expression in our family 10 years later! She also used to tell us that her ‘pigtails are leaking’ when they needed to be fixed. Makes perfect sense!” ― Heidi Crumrine
34. “When my daughter was 3 years old she started asking for ‘cheese pillows’ instead of ravioli.” ― Linda Keith
35. “When my boys were little, they had a lot of funny names for things. Some of our favorites, that still get used today, were ‘hang-a-banger’ for hamburger, ‘olglanolgal bar’ for granola bar and ‘wood cream’ for whipped cream.” ― Marie Zullo
36. “We got a Thule cargo carrier for our SUV when my son was 4. He called it the car’s ‘backpack.’ It stuck, and now we all call it the backpack.” ― Lindsay Winslow
Responses have been lightly edited.
