(1) TEMPER. “He has quite a temper” means the opposite of what it says. In American English, at least, we use the term ‘temper’ as if it’s synonymous with anger, where in fact it is that which tempers our anger. Having a bad temper means exactly what it says.

(2) ABJECT. I never heard the word ‘abject’ except in the phrase “abject poverty” — so I thought it meant extreme. Apparently it means bodily filth. Abject poverty is poverty so extreme that one lives in one’s own filth.

(3) GEEZER. This one I didn’t learn from Clinton. I learned it from watching Guy Ritchie’s movies. American dictionaries list standard usage as actual meaning, but I’m confident its origins put it in the same camp with these other words. A geezer is a guy. It’s cockney slang. An old geezer is an old guy, but you could have young geezers as well. Since Americans only ever hear the word ‘geezer’ when it is preceded by the word ‘old’ the two words have gotten stuck together in our minds. In American usage, “old geezer” is now redundant.

(4) GUNSEL. Again, the dictionary reflects usage, despite the fact that usage is based on a misunderstanding of the term. My dictionary defines ‘gunsel’ as “a criminal carrying a gun.” It goes on to say, “ORIGIN early 20th cent. (denoting a homosexual youth): from Yiddish gendzel ‘little goose,’ influenced in sense by gun.” We have Dashiell Hammett to thank for the confusion. In The Maltese Falcon, private detective Sam Spade tells Gutman, “Keep your gunsel away from me!” Yes, Wilmer is the kid with the two big handguns, but no, ‘gunsel’ did not refer to his guns. It was street slang for a young boy kept by an older man in a homosexual relationship. This is why both Gutman and Wilmer take such offense. Fortunately for Hammett, the censors didn’t understand the slang. Unfortunately, no one else seems to have gotten the joke either.

(5) CASH. These days, “cold hard cash” means paper dollar bills, despite the fact that they are neither cold nor hard. For most of the history of the language, only metal counted as cash. Paper money was exactly the opposite.