‘What’s the funniest misuse of the phonetic alphabet you’ve heard?’ – 21 people who are terrible at spelling things out

Given that the phonetic alphabet was largely invented for early 20th century military use, it’s no wonder that the vast majority of us are very bad at it, and substitute any old word in because we can’t remember what it should be. Towel? Tortilla? Oh, it’s meant to be ‘tango’.

They’ve been celebrating their absolute ineptitude on the AskUK subreddit after user Diyus asked this:

Lots of people who struggle to communicate jumped in with examples of their own, like these…

1.

‘Q for cucumber.’
–buginarugsnug

2.

‘I’ve heard ‘N for knife’ and ‘K for knife’ before, both equally infuriating.’
–levezvosskinnyfists7

3.

‘I knew of a not-terribly bright teenager who defeated his friends in a game of I Spy, with something beginning with S. When everyone eventually gave up, he triumphantly held up the fag he’d been smoking and said ‘Sigarette’.’
–Quality_Cabbage

4.

‘My cousin stumped everyone on a long car journey with ‘L’ for elephant. She was about five not a teenager though!’
–Electronic_Cream_780

5.

‘Work in theatre, had someone give their postcode ‘G for gnome, U for U2′.’
–BeardedSheppard

6.

‘Girl at work told the police our postcode was **** ** Fish Titties because she blanked and couldn’t remember Foxtrot Tango.’
–SerenXanthe

7.

‘Heard a few over the years: N for Knowledge was the most ironic. U for You as in you and me. The most seasonal was B for Baby Jesus!’
–LIRFC

8.

‘On the phone, answering questions. Last part of my postcode… 4 Jaffacake Forest.’
–misplacedfocus

9.

‘When I worked in sales in my youth I once said ‘B for Brains’ when reeling off a postcode. The customer kindly replied ‘Brains, as in you haven’t got any?’. Which was a lesson learned.’
–Huge-Promotion-7998

10.

‘D for double U.’
–JayMak78

11.

‘Getting a phone number from somebody who’d obviously had a tiring day, they started trying to give me the numbers like the phonetic alphabet. they managed ‘7 for seventy, 2 for timbuktu’ before I burst into laughter.’
–SpinMeADog