The Tale of “Faux Pas” and Other Word Mishaps

I’ll never forget the first time I boldly used “faux pas” in a conversation. I was at a dinner party, seated across from a couple of well-dressed, well-read people. I wanted to make an impression. The opportunity presented itself when someone shared a story about accidentally sending an embarrassing email to the wrong person.

“Well, that was quite the fox pass!” I declared, my voice confident.

The table fell silent for a beat. Then, the polite lady next to me leaned over, smiling. “You mean a faux pas?”

I blinked. Faux what?

Turns out, it wasn’t fox pass at all, but a French term for a social blunder. Great. My attempt to sound sophisticated had backfired, and instead, I had just committed the very thing I was trying to describe!

That wasn’t the only time my misadventures with language got me into trouble. A few years earlier, I had used “indigent” in an essay, thinking it meant “indignant.” The result was a paper where I described characters as “very indigent” when they were actually just mad, not broke. My teacher kindly pointed out that indigent meant impoverished, which explained the red circles around half my paragraphs.

But my favorite blunder was “epitome.” I had heard people say the word and thought it was pronounced exactly as it looked: epi-tome. So, when discussing my favorite movie in front of a large group, I confidently declared it “the epi-tome of modern cinema.”

Cue the chuckles.

One guy leaned over and whispered, “It’s pronounced ih-pit-uh-mee.”

I nodded, cheeks burning, trying to absorb my latest vocabulary lesson.

From that point on, I learned my lesson: never assume you know how to use or pronounce a word just because you’ve seen it written down. Now, before I throw any “fancy” terms into casual conversation, I double-check their meaning and pronunciation.

But I guess that’s just the epitome of learning from one’s mistakes, isn’t it?

Or should I say the epi-tome?