Common misconception partially coincident with fallacy
English language
Irregardless is a word. Nonstandard, slang, or colloquial terms used by English speakers are sometimes alleged not to be real words, despite appearing in numerous dictionaries. All words in English became accepted by being commonly used for a certain period of time; thus, there are many vernacular words currently not accepted as part of the standard language, or regarded as inappropriate in formal speech or writing, but the idea that they are not words is a misconception. Other examples of words that are sometimes alleged not to be words include burglarize, licit, and funnest which appear in numerous dictionaries as English words.
African American Vernacular English speakers do not simply replace "is" with "be" across all tenses, with no added meaning. In fact, AAVE speakers use "be" to mark a habitual grammatical aspect not explicitly distinguished in Standard English.
"420" did not originate from the Los Angeles police or penal code for marijuana use. California Penal Code section 420 prohibits the obstruction of access to public land. The use of "420" started in 1971 at San Rafael High School, where a group of students would go to smoke at 4:20 pm.
The word crap did not originate as a back-formation of British plumber Thomas Crapper's aptronymous surname, nor does his name originate from the word crap. The surname "Crapper" is a variant of "Cropper", which originally referred to someone who harvested crops. The word crap ultimately comes from Medieval Latin crappa.
The use of the word faggot as a pejorative for homosexual men was not derived from the burning of homosexuals at the stake with a bundle of sticks. Homosexuality was never punished with immolation in either England or its colonies. The actual etymology is unknown; it may come from an insult for unpleasant old women, or from British slang for a student that does errands for their superior.
The word fuck did not originate in the Middle Ages as an acronym for either "fornicating under consent of king" or "for unlawful carnal knowledge", either as a sign posted above adulterers in the stocks, or as a sign on houses visible from the road during the Black Death. Nor did it originate as a corruption of "pluck yew" (an idiom falsely attributed to the English for drawing a longbow). It is most likely derived from Middle Dutch or other Germanic languages, where it either meant "to thrust" or "to copulate with" (fokken in Middle Dutch), "to copulate" (fukka in Norwegian), or "to strike, push, copulate" or "penis" (focka and fock respectively in Swedish). Either way, these variations would have been derived from the Indo-European root word -peuk, meaning "to prick".
The expression "rule of thumb" did not originate from an English law allowing a man to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb, and there is no evidence that such a law ever existed. The false etymology has been broadly reported in media including Time magazine (1983), The Washington Post (1989) and CNN (1993). The expression originates from the seventeenth century from various trades where quantities were measured by comparison to the width or length of a thumb.
The word the was never pronounced or spelled "ye" in Old or Middle English. The confusion, seen in the common stock phrase "ye olde", derives from the use of the character thorn (þ), which in Middle English represented the sound now represented in Modern English by "th". Early printing presses often lacked types for the letter þ, meaning that "þͤ" () and "þe" were substituted with the visually similar "yͤ" and "ye", respectively.
The anti-Italian slur wop did not originate from an acronym for "without papers" or "without passport"; it is actually derived from the term guappo (roughly meaning thug or "dandy"), from Spanish guapo.
Xmas did not originate as a secular plan to "take the Christ out of Christmas". X represents the Greek letter chi, the first letter of Χριστός (Christós), "Christ" in Greek, as found in the chi-rho symbol ΧΡ since the 4th century. In English, "X" was first used as a scribal abbreviation for "Christ" in 1100; "X'temmas" is attested in 1551, and "Xmas" in 1721.Physics
The lift force is not generated by the air taking the same time to travel above and below an aircraft's wing. This misconception, sometimes called the equal transit-time fallacy, is widespread among textbooks and non-technical reference books, and even appears in pilot training materials. In fact, the air moving over the top of an aerofoil generating lift is always moving much faster than the equal transit theory would imply, as described in the incorrect and correct explanations of lift force.
Blowing over a curved piece of paper does not demonstrate Bernoulli's principle. Although a common classroom experiment is often explained this way, Bernoulli's principle only applies within a flow field, and the air above and below the paper is in different flow fields. The paper rises because the air follows the curve of the paper and a curved streamline will develop pressure differences perpendicular to the airflow.
The Coriolis effect does not cause water to consistently drain from basins in a clockwise/counter-clockwise direction depending on the hemisphere. The common myth often refers to the draining action of flush toilets and bathtubs. In fact, rotation is determined by whatever minor rotation is initially present at the time the water starts to drain, as the magnitude of the coriolis acceleration is negligibly small compared to the inertial acceleration of flow within a typical basin.
Neither gyroscopic forces nor geometric trail are required for a rider to balance a bicycle or for it to demonstrate self-stability. Although gyroscopic forces and trail can be contributing factors, it has been demonstrated that those factors are neither required nor sufficient by themselves.
A penny dropped from the Empire State Building would not kill a person or crack the sidewalk. A penny is too light and has too much air resistance to acquire enough speed to do much damage since it reaches terminal velocity after falling about 50 feet. Heavier or more aerodynamic objects could cause significant damage if dropped from that height.
Using a programmable thermostat's setback feature to limit heating or cooling in a temporarily unoccupied building does not waste as much energy as leaving the temperature constant. Using setback saves energy (5–15%) because heat transfer across the surface of the building is roughly proportional to the temperature difference between its inside and the outside.
It is not possible for a person to completely submerge in quicksand, as commonly depicted in fiction, although sand entrapment in the nearshore of a body of water can be a drowning hazard as the tide rises.
Quantum nonlocality caused by quantum entanglement does not allow faster-than-light communication or imply instant action at a distance, despite its common characterization as "spooky action at a distance". Rather, it means that certain experiments cannot be explained by local realism.
The slipperiness of ice is not due to pressure melting. While it is true that increased pressure, such as that exerted by someone standing on a sheet of ice, will lower the melting point of ice, experiments show that the effect is too weak to account for the lowered friction. Materials scientists still debate whether premelting or the heat of friction is the dominant cause of ice's slipperiness.Senses
Infants can and do feel pain.
All different tastes can be detected on all parts of the tongue by taste buds, with slightly increased sensitivities in different locations depending on the person; the tongue map showing the contrary is fallacious.
There are not four primary tastes, but five: in addition to bitter, sour, salty, and sweet, humans have taste receptors for umami, which is a "savory" or "meaty" taste. Fat does interact with specific receptors in taste bud cells, but whether it is a sixth primary taste remains inconclusive.
Humans have more than the commonly cited five senses. The number of senses in various categorizations ranges from five to more than 20. In addition to sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing, which were the senses identified by Aristotle, humans can sense balance and acceleration (equilibrioception), pain (nociception), body and limb position (proprioception or kinesthetic sense), and relative temperature (thermoception). Other senses sometimes identified are the sense of time, echolocation, itching, pressure, hunger, thirst, fullness of the stomach, need to urinate, need to defecate, and blood carbon dioxide (CO2) levels.
The human sense of smell is not weak or underdeveloped. Humans have similar senses of smell to other mammals, and are more sensitive to some odors than rodents and dogs.
partially overlapping with partially intersecting with partially sharing with partially matching with partially aligning with